She still has the ring. It still does not mean a thing.

So. It’s 2020 and another election cycle. That means it’s time once again to comment on yet another Nancy Mace political campaign. It’s now been ten years that she has been either running for office or scheming to run for office, and she still has placed herself on the side of evil.

I first commented on her political ambitions back in 2013 when she was in the process of trying to put together a primary challenge to Lindsay Graham. Somehow she decided that the way to beat Graham was to run to the right of him and so in the process ally herself with some really, really, bad people. She lost the race as expected – but as some political observers noted at the time (myself included), winning was not really her goal. It was a test drive to work the bugs out of the machine to pursue her ambition downstream.

Fast forward to 2015, and she decided, rather early, to figuratively climb in bed with the orange monster – one Donald J. Trump – and go to work on his campaign. Now mind you, at the time she did, few people expected Trump to win the nomination, so it was a pretty big gamble. The fact that Trump had already exposed himself as an unfit reprobate and pathological liar, the kind who does not know the difference between lies and truth -did not seem to give her pause.  This was before Lindsay Graham had sold his soul – and was still considered a “moderate” Republican Senator. But she got on the Trump Train anyway – express train to hell, no local stops.

However, interestingly enough, she got off the train sometime in 2016. The reasons are in dispute and there was some speculation that she was fired from the Trump Campaign in South Carolina – something she denies. But it was something her opponent used to hammer her in the primary run-up:

Meanwhile, a whisper campaign behind the scenes has suggested Mace’s departure from the Trump campaign may have been linked to something even more salacious.

In a press release following the latest first district forum on May 26, 2020, Mace’s top opponent in the race – Mount Pleasant, S.C. town councilwoman Kathy Landing – took a shot at the frontrunner (albeit not by name), specifically referencing alleged discrepancies in the latter’s background.

“While one of my opponents used tonight’s debate to dodge questions that must be answered before Republican primary voters cast their ballots, I did not shy away from my background or ideas to improve the quality of life for residents in (the first district),” Landing said in the statement.

We reached out to Landing (above) on Wednesday after receiving the press release and confirmed she was indeed referring to Mace – and specifically rumors surrounding her departure from the Trump campaign in 2016.

“Instead of referring people to a LinkedIn profile – the contents of which she dreamed up, Nancy Mace should have answered why she was not on President Trump’s team for the final months of the campaign,” Landing told us.

Landing also popped Mace for talking the talk – but not walking the walk – when it came to party unity.

A quick word about the source here – Fitsnews is a web site devoted to South Carolina politics that Nancy Mace co-owned with a guy named Will Folks. She sold her ownership stake in the company in 2013 prior to launching an unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate against Lindsey Graham. It’s not a reliable source – and questionable given Will Folk’s own personal baggage over the years.

Mace’s response to any allegations was this:

“Here are the facts: In 2015 Nancy was hired to work on the Trump campaign until the end of the South Carolina primary, but instead ended up being asked to travel to several more states and work for them longer than planned,” Mellstrom said. “Nancy loved every minute of it, but politics isn’t her occupation. She earns her living and pays her bills in real estate and has done so for the past several years. She had to get back to her job doing that.”

Interestingly enough she did not stick to that intention, running for the statehouse in 2017. On September 18, 2017, Mace announced and filed as a Republican to run in a special election for the South Carolina State House District 99 seat being vacated by Jimmy Merrill, who resigned earlier that month following an indictment and plea deal for several ethics violations. She won the runoff election then won in the general election.

And now just two years later – she is running for Congress to take Mark Sanford’s old seat. Sanford, you may recall earned disfavor by refusing to support the orange monster. He was primaried in 2018 and lost to Katie Arrington. And much earlier than that he hiked the Appalachian Trail all the way down to Argentina. ( For which Nikki Haley will be forever grateful).

It’s really interesting as you dig around finding information on Ms. Mace. She is indirectly tied to a few of the biggest political scandals in recent South Carolina history especially this one:

South Carolina political blogger Will Folks claimed that he had an affair with Republican candidate for governor Nikki Haley, an assertion that Haley denies.

Folks wrote on his blog Monday that he had an “inappropriate physical relationship” several years ago with Haley, before he was married.

Mace was still co-owner of the blog at that point. She’s had a frosty relationship with Nikki Haley ever since, although Haley endorsed her for Congress.

Mace’s famously frosty relationship with former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley stems from her co-ownership of FITS News, a political gossip and bikini website that falsely accused Ambassador Haley of cheating on her husband during her 2010 campaign for South Carolina governor, again in 2013, and called Nikki Haley demeaning and explicit names. Responding to the ensuing criticism, Mace said the website was “speaking the truth on behalf of the citizens and taxpayers of the Palmetto state.”

It’s really very interesting – the more you dig around about Nancy Mace’s career – the more you find some really disturbing things. My beef with her is primarily political, she is allied with the worst of the worst of the worst in the teabagger world. However, she is also tarred directly and indirectly with some really sketchy things as I mentioned above. But only on the fringes. Or maybe not.

Now I would submit that South Carolina politics is dirty and has been for a long, long time, so some of this should not be given too much credence – save for the fact that South Carolina Republicans make their “morality” a selling point. What all of this sketchy stuff does confirm for me is something I believed way back in 2013. Nancy Mace’s whole career since graduating from The Citadel ( as a transfer student it is also worth noting) has been one of shameless self-promotion.

And I’m not the only one who noticed that. Her challenger in this Congressional election has too:

In this campaign, State Representative Mace will spare no expense to attempt to present herself as an “outsider,” but that just isn’t the truth. Mace is a consummate political insider who is part of the problem with politics today. A shameless self-promoter, Mace’s foul-mouthed and salacious attempts for attention won’t mesh well with a reserved electorate that favors down-home, authentic leadership to climber politicians who put on airs.

There is no doubt Nancy Mace is a clever woman. It’s just sad that she uses that skill to embrace political positions designed to fuck over average Americans.

She favors privatizing Social Security – and has yet to speak out against Trump’s threats to dismantle the payroll tax.

She’s a climate change denier.

She has declared herself on board with the Trump plan to strip healthcare protections for millions. Her own website shows that she really does not understand how Medicaid expansion works – or propose a concrete plan if the ACA is struck down.

She has lied about a planned closure of Parris Island Marine Corps Recruit Depot.

She is liquored up on the flat tax-something that should disqualify her as a serious candidate from the start.

She has taken money from gun groups.

She supports offshore drilling. As well as the other Trump deregulation moves that threaten the environment.

She supports Trump’s immigration stance – which by extension, means she supports the truly evil things that Adolf Eichmann Stephen Miller has been doing to literally kill people, separate families, and otherwise behave inhumanely. There is no moral high ground here – you get on board with Miller’s program; you are an accomplice to evil.

One final point and one near and dear to my heart – she mouths useless platitudes about Israel while at the same time showing ZERO understanding of the country or the issues it has within the region and with the United States. Although she does not say it – she implies- that she is on board with Jared Kushner’s giveaway to Likud, the farce he calls a peace process. Basically, it’s boilerplate teabagger rhetoric that makes them happy while showing they know nothing about Israel as it really is.

As of today, she is engaged in COVID denialism – just like her Presidential candidate. The same day that the US had 88,000 new cases and 1016 deaths. We are losing a thousand people a day. She should be attacking Mitch McConnell for not getting a COVID assistance bill done – but she is not. She toes the party line.

The list goes on – summed up, she is on the wrong side of just about everything, and worse yet, she is placing herself there not out of sincere belief but cynical opportunism.

So she may be a Citadel graduate. But in every way that counts, she has forgotten the ideals of the institution and the country. She has allied herself with a monster – and thinks it won’t destroy her in the process.

News flash – it will:

Let her go back to selling real estate.