On a suspense-filled day in Congress, South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy stunned some of her colleagues by casting the seventh vote to vacate the chair and oust Speaker McCarthy.
Mace had backed McCarthy back in January when Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and other Republicans forced him to clear a series of votes to become speaker.
On Tuesday, there were murmurs inside the chamber when she announced her surprise vote, making her one of eight Republicans to push him out. She accused McCarthy of breaking his word.
‘You make a promise you should keep it,’ Mace told reporters outside the Capitol. As a fiscal conservative I am angry. As a woman I am deeply frustrated,’ she said.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) voted to vacate the chair. She was one of eight Republicans to do so, in a move that forced the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy
The move by GOP rebels to oust McCarthy, seen here swarmed by reporters after a vote to oust him from the speaker’s chair, helped cast the House into chaos. Republicans were set to meet Tuesday night to try to forge a path forwared
‘It’s not ideological. It’s about having a leader in our nation who will tell the truth, who you can trust,’ she said. ‘I am looking for a speaker who will tell the truth.’
She blasted out a seven-part tweet explaining her position.
‘Today I voted for the Motion to Vacate and remove the Speaker. This isn’t about left vs right. This isn’t about ideology. This is about trust and keeping your word. This is about making Congress do it’s job,’ she wrote in her post on X.
McCarthy, in a blunt press conference after announcing he would not put his name forward to try to regain the speakership, revealed obvious frustration with Mace.
‘Nancy Mace is a whole ‘nother story,’ he said, after talking about another member who resisted his pleas for support.
He said he phoned Mace’s chief of staff to ask, ‘Where have I not kept my word?’
‘You know what her chief of staff said? You have kept her word, 100 per cent,’ he said. Then he quipped that if the aide gets fired, ‘I’ll still give him a job.’
A regular on cable television, Mace said after January 6 that former President Donald Trump’s ‘entire legacy was wiped out.’
Trump at the time called her a ‘grandstanding loser.’
But Mace, whose coastal district includes Charleston and Hilton Head, has veered closer to the MAGA base and has defended Trump, who is facing multiple indictments.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., right, confer in the hallway near the House chamber in late September. She backed a resolution by Gaetz to vacate the chair on Tuesday
Mace said her vote was about ‘keeping your word’
She blasted out a tweet about her concerns
‘I promised the Lowcountry I would be an independent voice in Congress. That I would call the balls and strikes and do the right thing regardless of party. The Speaker has not lived up to his word on how the House would operate,’ she wrote.
She blasted McCarthy for the failure to push through individual appropriations bills, which preceded the government shutdown crisis where McCarthy moved a 45-day temporary government funding measure that passed aided by Democratic support.
‘No budget, no separate spending bills until it was too late, a CR which takes spending power out of the hands of the people and puts all the power into the hands of a select few.’
She added: ‘There has also been no action on many issues we care about and were promised. We were promised we would move on women’s issues and legislation to keep our communities safe. Those things never happened … With the current Speaker, this chaos will continue. We need a fresh start so we can get back to the people’s business free of these distractions.’
Mace stunned lawmakers with her decision to join hard right conservatives voting to oust McCarthy
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters Mace’s chief of staff told him that he kept his word ‘100 per cent’ of the time
She told reporters McCarthy had broken a pledge to help women get access to birth control after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.
‘Nancy Mace is the only member of the GOP YOLO caucus,’ wrote Tim Miller of the Bulwark, using the term for You Only Live Once.
The others voting to oust McCarthy included hard right conservatives. Voting to oust him were Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Ken Buck (R-Colo.), Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Bob Good (R-Va.), and Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.), along with Mace.
Mace was among those piling on Gaetz several months ago when he tried to torpedo McCarthy.
‘Matt Gaetz is a fraud. Every time he voted against Kevin McCarthy last week he sent out a fundraising email,’ she said at the time.
