Stop me if you’ve heard this story before: Leftist elites push a radical and damaging change on society. Pro-family conservatives object and try to fight back in politics. Leftists accuse conservatives of starting a “culture war.” Finally, Republicans surrender in the name of “compromise.”
Over and over again, this process has played out, to the point where many in the pro-family movement have despaired of ending the cycle. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There is a simple solution to this problem: we must make Republicans fear us again by getting involved directly in elections.
That’s the goal of my organization, American Principles Project PAC, which just launched a six-figure ad campaign to defeat surrender-minded GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., in her primary on June 14. We’ll be delivering digital ads like this one directly to voters in order to educate them about Mace’s dangerous record as an advocate of capitulating to the transgender agenda.
Last year, along with 22 other House Republicans, Mace signed on to the erroneously named “Fairness for All” Act (FFA), a GOP-led bill that supposedly seeks to draw a truce between religious conservatives and the woke left’s demands on gender ideology. But the so-called compromise, unsurprisingly, is really just a wave of the white flag.
Surrendering to Trans Ideology
FFA would add “sexual orientation and gender identity” to the Civil Rights Act, unleashing the federal government to punish objectors to leftist gender ideology as it does race discriminators. It mandates that nearly all institutions, public and private, allow men who claim a female identity into women’s activities and private spaces. The few exemptions it contains are restricted mostly to churches and explicitly religious organizations, and its conscience “protections” are absurdly vague — FFA leaves it to activist judges, for example, to decide if a doctor’s refusal to perform a sex change on a child constitutes illegal “discrimination.”
Last year, FFA seemed to have some momentum. Rumors were swirling around Capitol Hill that a Republican might even introduce it in the Senate. But fortunately, things have begun to change since then.
The conservative movement united in opposition. Academics such as Professor Robert George of Princeton University and Ryan Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, savaged the bill’s legal flaws. Organizations including the Heritage Foundation, Family Research Council, and Concerned Women for America detailed some of the bill’s most ridiculous impacts, highlighting the importance of Republican lawmakers opposing the bill.
FFA is now rapidly losing its existing support in the House. Of the 23 Republicans who previously signed on to the bill, two have already left Congress, two have announced they aren’t running for re-election, and an additional four — Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., Rep. Chris Jacobs, R-N.Y., and Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y. — have bravely pulled their support.
Unpopular Policy
Much of this has to do with the political environment. After a slew of national news stories demonstrating the disastrous consequences of policies that allow men in women’s sports, changing rooms, and bathrooms — and an uprising among parents against radical gender ideology in schools, especially after a highly publicized sexual assault that took place due to a transgender bathroom policy in Loudoun County, Virginia — support for the bill started to look bad for Republicans.
FFA would have mandated all these policies and more nationwide. Polling from our organization and others have shown that voters as a whole, including Democrats and independents, absolutely hate that idea.
Still, some sponsors, such as Mace and Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Mich., remain sponsors of the legislation. It’s hard to know exactly why. Perhaps it’s legislative incompetence — maybe they have no idea what the bill would do. Perhaps it’s a complete ignorance of or disregard for the opinions of their constituents.
But in Mace’s case, the most likely explanation is that she has truly bought into leftist gender ideology. She has been outspoken in her defense of the bill, essentially describing it as a common-sense requirement of basic justice.
Betraying the Pro-Family Movement
Our strategy here is simple. We want to replace Mace with a stronger Republican, and her primary challenger Katie Arrington, who signed American Principles Project’s Big Family Pledge, would certainly be an upgrade.
But we also hope to do more than just remove a subpar legislator from Congress. We’re trying to demonstrate that there are political consequences to betraying the pro-family movement. We aim to show other weak-kneed politicians that these mealy-mouthed capitulation tactics don’t work, and may even cost them their seats.
Politicians, especially those whose sympathies naturally lie with the left, often don’t change their tune due to a genuine change of heart. They change because they think they’ll be punished at the ballot box if they don’t. If we want Republicans to stop surrendering to the woke left on all sorts of issues, we’ve got to show there are serious consequences for doing so. Defeating Nancy Mace on June 14 — and obtaining an important scalp for the pro-family movement — would be a good first step.
