Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) warned that the Republicans' problems with voters over their hardline abortion stance is not going away after a single election cycle in a new interview with Eric Garcia for The Independent released on Monday.
She had some stark advice for her colleagues: stop "being a**holes to women."
"'The Republicans by and large bury their heads in the sand and lost seats because of this issue. We should have had a much larger margin of victory than we did,' Ms Mace said while speaking in her office. Ms Mace said she saw the sea change in her own district, which she said went from 'mildly pro-choice' to 'vehemently pro-choice,'" said the report. She added: “The first issue was it's always jobs, the economic issue. So inflation was number one. The second issue with my constituents and voters was abortion.”
"Ms Mace’s attempt to tone down the rhetoric on abortion reflects her larger difficulty in trying to find a middle ground between telling Republicans that they need to appeal to voters’ more moderate senses, while also trying to adhere to conservative orthodoxy and be a loyal Republican," said the report. "Since arriving to Congress, she has attempted to straddle that line. As a rape survivor, high school dropout-turned-military academy graduate and single mom in one of South Carolina’s swingiest districts, she has tried to get her fellow Republicans to support provisions like same-sex marriage, cannabis legalisation and access to birth control."
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Mace's attempts to distance herself from the more fringe elements of the party has made her enemies. Even before the abortion decision came down, she drew the fury of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who lashed out at her and called her "trash".
"We've left a lot of people out in the cold. And how do we bring these people back into the fold and it's not not going to win them over,” said Mace. “We're not going to win hearts and minds over by being a**holes to women. It's not gonna work that way.”
