And she might just win it
There’s a new “crazy Nancy” in town and she is very, very weird:
When former President Donald Trump lined up his top supporters at a hot and sticky rally in South Carolina’s Lowcountry two weeks ago, one of the state’s most visible GOP politicians was notably not in attendance.
Despite her ubiquity on TV and social media, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) wasn’t even an intro speaker.
In a sense, Mace’s absence wasn’t surprising. In 2021, her first year in office, she went from harshly criticizing Trump over Jan. 6 to groveling in a self-filmed video in front of Trump Tower after the former president endorsed her 2022 primary challenger, Katie Arrington.
A week after the South Carolina rally, Mace’s vote to end Kevin McCarthy’s speakership—and her confusing justification for it—may have obliterated whatever relationships she had left in the GOP.
Yet, 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.
Given their history, the idea sounds absurd to people who know Trump and Mace. A source close to Trump said the former president “absolutely hates Nancy Mace,” while a former senior aide to the congresswoman put it more bluntly.
“I would see Trump pick [Mike] Pence before he picks Mace,” the former staffer said.
[…]
The two Republicans share something in common that could help explain some of the veep chatter: Chris LaCivita, the top Trump 2024 campaign adviser who happens to be Mace’s former political strategist.
After Mace’s 2020 victory over former Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-SC), LaCivita wrote a blog post for FP1 Strategies, where he used to be a consultant, titled: “Nancy Mace: The Most Daring & Successful Tactic of 2020.”
“Nancy Mace is in Congress today because she had the courage of her own convictions and used her knowledge of her district to guide her decision-making rather than heeding the warnings of D.C. campaign operatives,” LaCivita gushed in the post, a copy of which The Daily Beast reviewed.
Now, some Republicans credit LaCivita with helping Mace emerge as an unlikely defender of the former president in the depths of his legal quagmire. She’s also been a frequent advocate of Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, launched this summer.
“He put her name out there,” a source familiar with the Mace VP discussions told The Daily Beast.
Noting that Trump endorsed a challenger to Mace in 2022, the source continued that the former president “can’t stand her” and “has never really trusted her.”
Despite Mace disavowing Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection, and given her ties to fellow South Carolinians Nikki Haley and Tim Scott in the 2024 field—which she’s described as a “love triangle”—LaCivita has been seen as a Mace ally in Trumpworld when few others have been willing to go to bat for her.
LaCivita denied pushing Mace as a veep candidate. “I was a former consultant for Rep. Mace—but it ends there,” LaCivita said in a statement to The Daily Beast. “Any suggestion or rumor that I have been advocating for anyone as VP is complete horseshit. The pick of a vice presidential candidate is President Trump’s, and President Trump’s alone.”
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung also responded to the reporting, saying, “None of these so-called sources know what they’re talking about. If they spent half the time spreading untrue stories as they do on their mental health, they’d be much happier people.”
[…]
While she has sometimes positioned herself as a moderate, in voting to oust McCarthy, Mace has aligned herself with Trumpworld figures like Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Steve Bannon. Since her pivotal vote, Mace has tried to tap their grassroots supporters for donations by casting herself as an enemy of the establishment. Many Republican officials and operatives are indeed furious with Mace, but mostly because they believe she is only motivated by attention.
Their case was not weakened when she walked into a GOP conference on Tuesday wearing a shirt with a literal scarlet letter to make a statement on “being demonized for my vote and for my voice.”
She is a bizarre figure by normal political standards but she fits right in the MAGA universe.
Where do they find these people?