Nancy Mace and the urge to be needlessly crude
Republicans need to fight. But we need to fight as adults, not as Beavis and Butthead.
Nancy Mace is correct on the merits: Grown men should not be in women's restrooms and locker rooms. Mace, a sexual assault survivor, has legitimate reason to be concerned about men in women's private spaces. It is frankly shameful that Republican "men" allowed Mace to take the lead on this issue, as "MAGA" Mike Johnson should have been the first one to push a rule change that requires people to use facilities that match their biological sex.
But is Mace making this argument in good faith, or is she simply using a wedge issue to draw attention (and campaign donations) to herself? Her behavior indicates her concern is far more about "look at me!" than about the safety of women in the Capitol Building. Even if she is completely sincere, she could have made her point without the theatrics.
Mace could have gone directly to Speaker Johnson and requested a rules change, without making a spectacle of the issue. If she did not get cooperation from leadership, she could then go public. She instead decided to make herself the face of the conflict, making it more about her than the issue itself.
What is worse is how fundamentally un-serious Mace has been throughout the process. Instead of making arguments about safety and biological reality, Mace went out of her way to be provocative and troll the Left with Tweets about male genitalia. She has taken something that is a serious issue - especially when it comes to locker rooms - and denigrated both herself and the public discourse with crude language.
Welcome to the Trumpification of the Republican Party: We nominated a foul-mouthed lifelong New York City liberal three times, and Republicans are trying to emulate his electoral success by imitating his filthy mouth. Instead of making an argument and passing legislation (or in this case, a rules change) Trumpian Republicans must be crude and crass, trolling and taunting instead of making fact-based logical arguments. Mace gained nothing with crude remarks about male genitalia, when simply moving forward with amendments to the rules would have accomplished the same thing.
Fellow Republicans, we need to be better. We need to be the adults in the room, even when our President is incapable of taking that role. Women's privacy and safety are under assault, as is the the reality of human biology. We should not minimize the seriousness of these issues by being needlessly crude. Yes, we need to fight. But we need to fight as adults, not as Beavis and Butthead. The country deserves a Republican Party that takes policy and argumentation seriously.
