Nancy Mace Is the Future of the Republican Party
Before she became the most prominent transphobe in American politics, Nancy Mace presented herself as a different type of Republican. Taking congressional office in 2021, the South Carolina representative quickly established a reputation as a “pro-baby, pro-gun, pro-pot, pro-gay” maverick who scrapped with far-right Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, broke with Donald Trump after January 6, and implored her colleagues to “stop being assholes to women.” Mace talked openly about being sexually assaulted, about her experience as a single mother, and about her desire to “find a way to balance the right to life but balance women’s rights as well” as a lawmaker. She billed herself as a “caucus of one.” As recently as May 2023, The New York Times depicted her as the future of a kinder, gentler post-Trump Republican Party.
Few would label Mace kind or gentle now, and today, as she engages in a relentless crusade against trans rights, she is more one-trick pony than “caucus of one.” She has used slurs like “tranny” in committee meetings; bullied trans congresswoman Sarah McBride, whom she has labeled a threat; and suggested that people like her are not women but rather “mentally ill.” In November, she pushed a bill that would ban transgender women from using bathrooms on federal property, that aimed to discourage them from public service, and otherwise served to discourage them even from visiting government buildings or national parks. “I am a general’s daughter,” she wrote in her memoir. “I know a battle when I see one.”
If there is a through line connecting the incongruous halves of Mace’s political career, it is an all-consuming desire for attention. During her first few years in Congress, it seemed that Trump’s hold on the Republican Party was loosening, and Mace eagerly played the right notes for reporters in search of the GOP’s next generation. Eventually, it became clear that Trump wasn’t going anywhere—and Mace, whose district had been redrawn and was suddenly significantly redder, was suddenly the wrong type of Republican. She fixed it by becoming the right type, more or less overnight: The formerly “pro-gay” representative was now Congress’s most vociferous anti-trans culture warrior.
Mace is best known for theatrical displays of cruelty that capitalize on anti-trans sentiment and almost always stand out in a chaotic news cycle. For her, every anti-trans stunt she engages in creates a virtuous cycle: She does something bigoted and provocative; trans people and allies respond; she then claims she’s been “bullied” or “silenced”—in a vicious cycle that never ends.
