During her abortive run for governor of South Carolina, Nancy Mace’s signature policy was to remove a tax on boat loan interest – appropriate enough for someone who always seemed to be trimming her sails to catch the wind.
After January 6 the newly minted Congresswoman declared that Donald Trump had no future in the GOP. But after his fortunes revived, she refashioned herself as a Trump loyalist and was a key figure in the effort to oust the then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. A rather monomaniacal focus on transgenders in women’s bathrooms and women’s sports followed, coinciding with the peak of public interest in that issue from 2021-23. In 2025, Mace was a leading member of the “Epstein theory of everything” tendency in Congress, even claiming to have compiled her own list of the financier’s clients.
Yet it turns out that there was something permanent about Nancy Mace after all – from late 2023 to early 2024 she got a total of nine tattoos on her arms, seemingly meant to itemize the different parts of her outlook and worldview. “JUSTICE” reads one. Another is the opening line from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway: “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” There is also a haloed figure who looks like Mary. A glowering bird of prey adorns her right shoulder.
Mace, who favored blazers and sweatshirts during her time in Congress, had not shown these tattoos to the public until now. She unveiled them on her new podcast Get Maced. According to her, the tattoos had a double purpose: they gave her “the pain that I need to feel” and helped her “reclaim” her body and identity.
What to make of Get Maced? A cursory scroll through the first few episodes show that Mace has developed a severe case of YouTube thumbnail face: eyes wide, mouth agape. Islam seems to be her latest area of interest. In the most recent episode, Mace details a new city ordinance in Hamtramck, Michigan, that allows animals to be sacrificed for religious reasons over what sounded like belly-dancer music. An important issue, to be sure, but Cockburn wonders how long it will be until Mace will be seized by yet another cause.
Comments