SC Republican voted to impeach Trump for Jan. 6. Don’t punish him this election.
Rep. Tom Rice must win the Republican nomination for the 7th Congressional District. That’s not an endorsement. It’s a plea for a return to a semblance of sanity in our increasingly insane democracy.
I’m neither a Rice fan nor cheerleader. We’ve had major disagreements throughout the years, with my excoriating him for silly partisan politics, and him complaining to my editors that I was being too harsh or unfair. But a Rice victory in the primary against Donald Trump-endorsed Russell Fry and other candidates would get us closer to a kind of restoration, a reset to a pre-Trump world, and would mean we wouldn’t keep tumbling down a conspiracy theory-laced political rabbit hole that emerged when Trump came down that golden escalator nearly seven years ago.
Rice needs to win the Republican nomination because he cleared the lowest moral and ethical hurdle when he decided to vote to impeach Trump for his role in the lead-up to the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection that saw the first full frontal attack on our capital in a couple of centuries. That’s how bad things have gotten for politics in South Carolina along the coast and much of the state. We can no longer rely upon elected officials to do the basics, put country above party when our democracy is at stake. Rice’s Republican opponents can’t make that simple pledge, at least not credibly. Because if they could, they wouldn’t be running to unseat Rice but would rather use his example during the impeachment hearings to urge fellow Republicans to get a grip, to stop following Trump as though in a cult-like trance.
To be clear, this isn’t because I agree with Rice’s politics. I don’t. And it’s not because I’m rooting for him to win another term in Congress. I just want each of our choices in November in the 7th Congressional District to have a modicum of ethical standards.
I believe Rice was wrong when he decided against impeaching Trump for trying to bribe the Ukrainians to launch a phony investigation against Joe Biden by withholding hundreds of millions of dollars of assistance from a country that obviously desperately needed the assistance. I believe he was wrong earlier in his career when he spent a lot of time trying to make headlines by screaming “King Obama” and trying to undercut a transformative health care reform law that has improved the lives of millions of Americans. And I’m bothered by his recent activities, including trying to blame Biden for fentanyl deaths; suggesting Vladimir Putin was emboldened to invade Ukraine because Biden disagrees with Rice on how to handle our southern border; and lying about Biden’s supposed “war on American energy.”
Rice isn’t my first choice. A man who was considered the moderate in the race when he first emerged from the Myrtle Beach area to become a U.S. Congressman has since resembled a boilerplate hard right-wing flamethrower who is more political than principled. Policy-wise, he was in near lockstep with Trump, a man who prioritized a massive tax cut bill that prioritized enriching his wealthy friends more than helping the poor and working-class. But during times such as these – as unsettling as these – your personal preferences shouldn’t take precedence over trying to preserve as much democracy as we have left after the Trump era.
That’s why I’m hoping Rice emerges from the field of Republicans. Because despite all of our disagreements, despite our prior clashes, when he absolutely had to, he put country over party, at least momentarily when it counted the most, in the wake of an attack in the heart of our democracy. That means something. It must.
This story was originally published March 10, 2022 at 11:29 AM.