Last week, we saw that Trump has decided to restart the circus in Columbia, South Carolina next Saturday. His campaign issued a press release stating the members of the South Carolina congressional delegation would be joining him. Lindsey Graham will be, but that’s pretty much it— and some have gone out of their way to announce that they won’t be joining Trump for the show.
This morning Michael Scherer and Josh Dawsey reported that Team Trump have been begging elected officials to come to the event. Most have turned them down. “Many of the state’s lawmakers and political operatives,” the Washington Post reporters wrote, “and even some of his previous supporters, are not ready to pick a presidential candidate. They find themselves divided between their support for Trump, their desire for a competitive nomination fight in the state and their allegiance to two South Carolina natives, former governor Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott, who have taken steps to challenge Trump for the nomination. Both are said by people close to them to be seriously considering a bid, and Haley is expected to announce in the coming weeks, South Carolina operatives said.”
The first South Carolina House member to say no definitively was Nancy Mace, who represents a swing district that includes Charleston, where Trump is unpopular. Mace’s district was gerrymandered to make it redder and a judge just threw those boundaries out as overtly racist. She’ll be running next year in a purple district. She’s been going out of her way to sound like an independent, speaking out on issues that go against the Republican grain. It’s made her popular with the national media. Today she was on Meet The Press. Although she just voted for both GOP anti-Choice bills that passed 2 weeks ago, she told Chuck Todd that abortion extremism is why the GOP did so much worse in the midterms than anyone expected.
She told him that her party “didn't learn anything after overturning of Roe v. Wade. We buried our head in the sand… It’s the reason we didn’t get more of a majority. We should have had a dozen or two dozen seat majority this legislative session but we don’t because this is one of the issues that was top of mind for swing voters… I'm here, waving my hand, being a very vocal person on this and saying, ‘I’m pro-life, but I'm willing to sit down and talk about how do we balance the rights of women and the right to life?’ At some point, that infant has the right to life. And women's right are equally important, so let's have that conversation. Let's have it in the open. Let's find a way to move together because having a divided Congress means we're supposed to be working together, but both sides are afraid of their primaries. That's not the way we should be operating, but that’s the way the majority of people in Congress, they vote and legislate out of fear.”
He asked her if she’s afraid of getting primaried on the abortion issue, not mentioning that she has the same voting record as the most extreme anti-Choice crackpots. “I got primaried last time and the time before that,” she reminded him. “I expect a primary in the general election every time, being in a swing district. But I will tell you, even with the far right coming after me on this issue in the last primary, I won overwhelmingly by nine points. And then, when we had our general election, I flipped 40% of Democrat precincts and out-performed the former president in my district, as well, in the most conservative precincts. And so I found a way to try represent all the voices. I can't represent one side or the other.”