Nancy Mace wants to be pro-women and pro-Trump. It’s not working | Opinion

It can be hard to predict where U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace stands on any given day. The South Carolina congresswoman has garnered a reputation as a Grade A flip-flopper for her constantly vacillating stances on the issues of the moment. She emerges as a fierce critic of Republican-backed bills only to vote for them in the end. She criticizes Donald Trump only to later endorse him. It can be hard to keep up.

But the proof that she’s decided to sell out completely for Trump came Sunday in an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos.

Stephanopoulos asked Mace a perfectly legitimate — and necessary — question about how she can support a presidential candidate whom a jury found liable of sexual abuse. That candidate is, of course, Donald Trump, who was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll. Carroll is one of about two dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct since the 1970s. Mace endorsed Trump earlier this year.

“You don’t find it offensive that Donald Trump has been found liable for rape?” Stephanopoulos asked Mace.

Mace, notably, is a victim of sexual assault herself. She was raped at age 16 — something that’s also quite difficult to square with her enthusiastic support of Trump.

It’s a fair question, and it’s one that should be asked of more Republicans who have chosen to stand firmly behind the former president. But Mace didn’t seem to want to answer it, and she tried awfully hard to sidestep it.

First, she suggested that the verdicts against Trump do not matter because they occurred in civil, not criminal, court. Really?

Then, she repeatedly accused Stephanopoulos of attempting to “shame” her for her political choices as a rape victim. She seemed to think that this argument was especially compelling, because she repeated various versions of it at least 17 times on social media Sunday, including in one post that said Stephanopoulos “looked like a horses ass who hates women, especially rape victims.”

Mace told Stephanopoulos that his “disgusting” questioning would discourage more women from coming forward to speak about rape.

Frankly, what seems more likely to discourage women from coming forward to talk about rape is the behavior of men like Trump who use their platforms to smear and defame those who accuse them of it. Or seeing voters elect an abuser ascend to the highest office in the land despite the very public mountain of accusations against him. That’s exactly the kind of impunity and vitriol that leads survivors to choose silence, and it’s the kind of behavior Mace seems willing to overlook or tolerate in a president.

Besides, what makes Mace’s support of Trump particularly ludicrous isn’t the fact that she’s a victim of rape herself. It’s the fact that, as an elected official, she has repeatedly portrayed herself as an advocate for women. She has been a strong voice pushing her party to do better on women’s issues, including access to birth control, saying, “as a party, I think we come across like a--holes sometimes on women’s issues.” She also courageously shared her experience as a rape survivor to advocate for exceptions for rape and incest in a proposed South Carolina abortion ban.

All of that is admirable. But by supporting a presidential candidate who shows so little respect for women, Mace has made herself part of the problem she’s spent so much time rebuking. When the Republican candidate for president is someone who brags about being able to “do anything” to women, then the GOP is going to keep coming across “like a--holes on women’s issues,” no matter how much people like Mace try to shore up its image.

We should all empathize that Mace experienced something horrible as a teenager, and that she has surely faced a great deal of shame and stigma as an adult because of it. It is certainly never appropriate to “shame” a rape victim about their political choices, but that’s not what happened Sunday. As a politician, Mace can and should be pressed about her political choices. The fact that she is a rape victim does not give her a free pass, and as an elected official, she has to answer tough questions. She never actually gave Stephanopoulos a direct answer to his question Sunday, but her lack of one told us all we needed to know.