Does No One Love Nancy Mace Enough To Dash Her Trump VP Dreams?
Seriously, that's what this is all about?
Rep. Nancy “Hester” Mace, from my home state of South Carolina, has become a chaos agent and wrestling heel in a faceless Republican caucus. She even turned up at the Capitol in costume. Her staff loves their lives!
If you can’t smell what the Mace is cooking, the Daily Beast offered a theory last week: She’s auditioning for Donald Trump’s vice president, which the Beast suggests is “2024’s biggest GOP prize.” The last booby to win this prize had a DIY gallows constructed in his honor and is currently polling under Vivek Ramaswamy in the Republican presidential primaries. It’s not a “prize,” it’s a cursed locket.
But hey, if you can just stay alive, the VP job pays a good deal more than rank-and-file House member while not requiring that much extra work (no offense, Ms. Harris). Considering how eager Satan probably is for Trump’s soul, there is a good chance his VP would assume the top job during his second term.
There’s already heated competition for the VP slot among the worst people you can imagine — Marjorie Taylor Greene, Elise Stefanik, and Kari Lake. Yet, according to the Daily Beast:
Mace has been privately telling Republicans that she has a real shot at being named Trump’s vice presidential nominee for the 2024 election, according to six Republicans familiar with the discussions.
Three South Carolina Republicans also said they’ve heard about Mace floating herself as a VP pick, dating back to the early summer.
It’s been barely a year since Trump endorsed Mace’s primary challenger, MAGA nut Katie Arrington, and actively campaigned against Mace in South Carolina. At a 2022 hate rally, he encouraged the crowd to boo the very mention of her name. Maybe trying to end her political career didn’t fully underscore this point for Mace, but he doesn’t like her. He’s called her “crazy” and a “terrible person who has no idea what she’s doing.” Proving him right won’t secure Mace a spot on the ticket.
Mace does have an ally within Trump’s orbit. Chris LaCivita, an adviser to his unholy 2024 campaign, was Mace’s former political strategist. We assume he’s not currently advising her, and The Scarlet Letter cosplay was her own idea. Still, could LaCivita pull a Paul Manafort, who manipulated Trump into picking Mike Pence? Trump is still sore over Pence cheating on him with the Constitution and refusing to help him steal the election. He most likely will pick someone with a cult-like devotion to him (Greene) or someone without the smallest glimmer of a conscience (Stefanik). Pence married his and called her “Mother,” which was inconvenient.
Mace also lacks Nikki Haley’s veneer of respectability. The “normal” House Republicans who nonetheless support Trump are pissed with her after she voted to remove Once And Never Speaker Kevin McCarthy. They don’t even take her seriously as a bomb thrower with conviction. They believe she’s a shallow opportunist for whom the “A” on her Ann Taylor cotton tee stands for “attention-seeking.”
Republican strategist Ron Bonjean suggested that Mace could face another primary challenge for her racially gerrymandered seat. This time Arrington would position herself as the sensible team player. She dismissed Mace’s vote to boot McCarthy as a “political stunt.”
“If not me, there will be many others,” Arrington said.
That’s probably true. Mace might rail against the “establishment” while fundraising off her chaos-making, but it was establishment Republicans who helped her hold off a primary challenge last year. Now she’s on her own.
There’s also the fact that she’s a known shit talker about Trump, and not just in the days after January 6 when Republicans were annoyed about almost getting killed. “She would absolutely dump on Trump,” a former Mace aide said. She could appeal to the mad MAGA king outside Trump Tower again, but it won’t work. Forgiveness isn’t one of Trump’s positive traits, of which he has none.
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Cue the emergency lights and the dancing badgers! Must credit Stephanie Miller!
Sydney Powell has pleaded guilty in the Georgia election fraud case! She done flipped like a silver dollar pancake. It's a good day!
The guiding star for my entire life has been "Don't run for Vice President with someone who has 91 criminal indictments pending." It has served me well.