Part of: 2026 Governor Campaign
National Review post-mortem: 'How Nancy Mace Self-Immolated'
National Review, a conservative flagship, ran a scathing post-mortem on Nancy Mace's fifth-place primary finish, arguing the collapse was self-inflicted by a politician who 'would say and do just about anything for attention.' The critique is notable for coming from her own ideological side.
The harshest verdict on Nancy Mace's gubernatorial collapse came from her own side of the aisle. In a National Review "Corner" post titled "How Nancy Mace Self-Immolated," staff writer Matthew X. Wilson argued that her fifth-place primary finish was the predictable end of a career built on courting controversy.
In the magazine's own words, Mace "built a reputation on Capitol Hill as someone who would say and do just about anything for attention," and Wilson placed her trajectory alongside Marjorie Taylor Greene's:
"The story of Nancy Mace is merely another variation of the same sequence of events that led to Marjorie Taylor Greene's resignation from Congress in January."
Matthew X. Wilson, National Review
Those characterizations are the columnist's opinion. National Review ran it as a companion to Jeffrey Blehar's "Goodbye, Nancy Mace" column, two post-mortems from the right in a single day. It echoes the broader post-loss commentary; see also the collapse-years-in-the-making and rough-downfall write-ups, and Mace's own framing that "I chose wrong if the goal was winning an election."
Sources & related coverage. National Review, "How Nancy Mace Self-Immolated" (Matthew X. Wilson) · National Review, "Goodbye, Nancy Mace" (Jeffrey Blehar) · catalog entry: In the Media → National Review
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