HOW REPUBLICANS WOULD RESPOND TO NANCY MACE'S BIGOTED GRANDSTANDING, IF THE PARTIES WERE REVERSED

As I'm sure you know, Nancy Mace got her scalp:

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced Wednesday that transgender women are not permitted to use bathrooms in the Capitol that match their gender identity....

Johnson’s statement — which was made on Transgender Day of Remembrance, recognized annually to memorialize trans people who died due to anti-trans violence — comes days after Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) introduced a bill to bar transgender women from facilities on Capitol Hill that match their gender identity, a response to the election earlier this month of Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.).

McBride will be the first openly transgender person in Congress.

In a statement following the policy announcement Wednesday, McBride said she disagreed with the new rule but would abide by it.

It has been pointed out that Mace wasn't always an anti-trans bigot -- in fact, she once co-sponsored a (moderately) pro-trans bill:

In 2021, she co-sponsored the Fairness for All Act, a bill seeking to protect LGBTQ+ Americans from discrimination while balancing religious liberty.

At the time, Mace tweeted....

So what happened to Mace? The answer is easy: Redistricting happened. Her district in and around Charleston, South Carolina, had been swingy enough for a Democrat to win it in 2018. A redistricting plan signed into law in 2022 made the district much more Republican, but it was challenged in court. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court approved the plan, making the district solidly Republican.

Democrats should still call out her hypocrisy. They should do what I think Republicans would do if the parties' positions on LGBTQ rights were reversed and a hypocritical Democrat named Nancy Mace had done what the real Nancy Mace has done.

Democrats should take the bill she co-sponsored and introduce it themselves. They shouldn't change a word. The only change they should make is to the title.

Instead of calling it the Fairness for All Act, they should call it the Make America Compassionate for Everyone Act.

Short version: the MACE Act.

Yes, this would be a stunt, and I know: Democrats don't do stunts. Democrats think stunts are beneath them.

But if I were a House Democrat, I'd do the stunt. Stunts can make a point in a vivid way. (I know: Most Democrats don't do vivid, either.)

There are problems with the bill. It was filed as a Republican alternative to the Equality Act, which House Democrats passed in 2021 on a mostly party-line vote. (In the Senate, the Equality Act died in committee.) The Republican bill explicitly permits discrimination by religious groups and in school sports. But even if the bill is flawed, it would have created a better world for trans people than the hellscape Republicans want to create for them now.

It doesn't matter. The bill wouldn't pass now, or even get out of committee. The point of filing it is to inform voters that the great crusader against the transgender menace knew three years ago that trans people aren't a menace. And so did the other co-sponsors, including Donald Trump's pick for UN ambassador, Elise Stefanik. But Democrats won't do it.