Nancy Mace, a freshman Republican from South Carolina’s first congressional district, faces off against a Trump-endorsed challenger in tonight’s primary election. According to the Washington Examiner’s James Sweet, “the roots of this challenge run far deeper than loyalty to Trump. Mace is targeted because she embodies a fusion of libertarian and conservative ideals that anger the emerging populist wing of the GOP.”
It’s not entirely clear why Mace is the future “leader of a fusionist movement that yearns to regain its influence in the GOP,” as Sweet argues. Sweet’s Examiner column cites the fact that Mace “harnesses traditional conservative values such as law and order by co-sponsoring legislation to investigate the role of antifa during the 2020 summer riots” and “has taken a stance on social issues that draw the ire of socially conservative Republicans.” But of course, the populist wing of the GOP that Mace is ostensibly at odds with is just as happy to champion law and order and go after Antifa, so it’s not clear how that stance distinguishes Mace from her counterparts. And if anything, Mace’s social liberalism is at odds with fusionism; fusionism’s stated political philosophy, after all, is a fusion of social and economic conservatism. “Angering social conservatives” is not evidence of Mace’s principled Reagan conservatism.
Sweet also notes that some conservatives dislike Mace’s votes “to certify the 2020 presidential election and to hold Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress.” Katie Arrington, Mace’s primary opponent, has said she does “believe [the 2020 election] was stolen,” and though she accepts Biden as the “duly elected” president, she faults Mace for not objecting to the certification of the election. But after initially condemning Trump following the events of January 6, Mace has since pivoted to working embarrassingly hard to regain Trump’s favor.
Sweet’s Examiner piece raises serious questions about his understanding of the fusionist doctrine. He writes that “fusionism led to the rise of former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), the tea party movement, and politicians declaring themselves ‘fiscally conservative, socially liberal.’” I don’t know where he got the idea that fusionism is “fiscally conservative, socially liberal,” but it’s not from Frank Meyer. Whatever one’s opinion of Meyer’s fusionist philosophy, it was not “socially liberal” in the sense that Sweet describes. Meyer saw freedom as a crucial component of virtue but recognized that freedom was legitimate only within the bounds of natural law. The Founding Fathers, Meyer wrote, were concerned with
the establishment of freedom and its preservation, but they understood that freedom is meaningless unless founded upon “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” The protection of the free energies of free individuals, so that they might in liberty strive to live according to those laws, was their most intimate concern. But they knew that in the defense of liberty a properly constituted state is necessary, not only to “establish Justice [and] insure domestic Tranquility” but also to “provide for the common Defense.” They did not content themselves with abstract analyses of liberty; they proclaimed in unambiguous tones, “Give me liberty or give me death.” To that wager of fate, “with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence,” they pledged “our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
That is distinct from Mace’s social liberalism, which often veers into an affront to natural law. Not only that, but Mace has often championed a kind of progressivism that is not only at odds with social conservatism, but with limited-government conservatism, too.
This is where Sweet really loses his way. He writes that, “when it comes to the LGBT community, Mace takes a libertarian position as well. She co-sponsored the Fairness For All Act, which sought to provide anti-discriminatory protections to LGBT people while giving exemptions to faith-based organizations.” I know that Sweet has read my criticisms of the Fairness for All Act (FFAA), because he cites them in the piece: “Nate Hochman was one of the first to call out Mace and other Republicans’ support for the bill. He issued a scathing rebuke of the legislation and targeted the 21 Republicans supporting the bill, causing members of Congress such as Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) to drop their support for the legislation following the ensuing social conservative outcry.” So it’s confusing how he could have arrived at the conclusion that there is anything libertarian about the legislation. As I wrote in the piece he cites:
FFAA protects the conscience rights of defined religious institutions — churches, religious charities, and so on. It does not protect most individuals, even if those individuals object to something like gender ideology on an authentically religious basis. Most businesses with more than 15 employees are subject to the legislation’s definition of “public accommodations,” meaning that they would run afoul of civil-rights law for objecting to the progressive line on gender and sexuality. Jack Phillips, the Christian baker who was dragged all the way to the Supreme Court for neglecting to custom-make a cake celebrating a same-sex marriage, might be safe so long as his business does not exceed 15 employees; but were he to expand to 16, he would be subject to the punitive whims of progressive bureaucracies such as the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, whose members have already made it their personal mission to drive Phillips’s small business out of existence.
But FFAA’s threats to the American constitutional order go above and beyond the rights of religious individuals and business owners. So-called “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” who reject gender ideology on the grounds that it erases women, physicians who do not want to mutilate children’s bodies by prescribing puberty blockers or performing irreversible sex-change surgeries, coaches who want to protect their female athletes from biologically male competitors, and any number of other secular dissenters from gender ideology are not afforded rights under FFAA’s framework. Rather, acting on the belief that men and women exist as distinct biological categories — let alone the belief that men and women exist for one another, both in terms of sexual ethics and the definition of marriage — would be viewed as legitimate only on religious grounds, and relatively narrow ones at that.
How, exactly, is any of that libertarian — let alone fusionist? As I wrote in the piece, “unless one has embraced the left-wing framework construing ‘civil liberties’ and ‘rights’ as affirmative entitlements to the use of coercive state power, bills such as FFAA are not protecting ‘civil liberties’ in the traditional sense of the word, nor are they balancing legitimate competing claims for ‘rights.’” Sweet seems to have embraced that framework as well. He’s free to do so, but he shouldn’t shroud progressivism in the language of traditional conservative principles.
As Sweet notes, Mace describes herself as a “limited government fiscal conservative.” She has yet to provide an adequate explanation for how her stated “limited government” principles square with her support for a sweeping expansion of the power of the federal government, and a radical constriction of the conscience, speech, and associational rights of private citizens. Voters in South Carolina’s first congressional district will have to decide for themselves tonight if they’re comfortable with that position; as an incumbent, Mace may well prevail. But conservatives like Sweet should know better.