Kicking off campaign, Rep. Tom Rice outlines a new vision for Republicans
Speaking at a luncheon for the Florence Rotary Club, U.S. Rep. Tom Rice wasted no time in addressing the big question he faces around his eastern South Carolina congressional district: Why, exactly, did a Republican like himself vote to impeach former President Donald Trump?
Having faced the question for almost exactly 10 months now, Rice had a ready answer, delivered less than a minute after he took the podium.
“I supported Donald Trump 94% of the time on the floor, I campaigned for him, I was right in the middle of drafting a lot of the big successful things, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and the trade policy,” Rice told the local business and charity leaders who had gathered at the Hotel Florence. “But golly, you can’t rip our Constitution to shreds and sit there and watch our Capitol Police get beat up for four hours and not try to stop it.”
As Rice has faced that question since he and nine other Republicans voted with House Democrats on Jan. 13 to impeach Trump for his role in inciting a violent mob to attach the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6, he’s drawn a clear line: He supports the policies and ideas that Trump pushed during his presidency, but not necessarily the man himself.
In doing so, Rice has laid out a new vision for the Republican Party, and one he hopes voters will buy into as he seeks re-election next year. Rice is facing a crowded field of conservatives vying to oust him in June’s primary election, many of whom are arguing that national Republicans need to embrace both Trump’s ideas and policies as well as the man himself, his base and his personality. But in his speech in Florence on Monday, Rice said the party needed a new direction.
“We as Republicans, we’ve got to run on our own ideas and not just focus on one very divisive man,” he said.
As Rice formally kicks off his 2022 re-election effort, the sixth time he’ll be seeking the state’s 7th congressional seat, he said he plans to highlight how both he and Republicans have benefited the residents and businesses across his eight-county district, and how such a track record is a better path forward for the GOP than following faithfully behind Trump.
Earlier on Monday, Rice visited the Canipe’s Candy Citchen along Highway 9 in Longs, a candy factory that flooded badly during Hurricane Florence and that received a Paycheck Protection Program loan during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rice supported the CARES Act, which created the PPP program, and said Republicans helping to pass programs like that to help small business owners had a big impact on his district.
“I believe if we hadn’t done the PPP program the country would have gone into a depression because we shut down 30-40% of the economy like that,” he said.
Showing Rice taffy pullers and wrappers, as well as a chocolate-covered pretzel assembly line, Todd and Butch Canipe the brothers who run the small factory, agreed. The PPP loan, plus a booming summer season this year saved the business from shutting down, Butch Canipe said.
“We were, probably a year ago, we were probably about to be out of business and then we had a really good summer that brought us back and helped,” he said.
Rice quietly launched his re-election bid at a fundraiser at the Dunes Club in Myrtle Beach in September, but took his bid public on Monday. Other stops on Rice’s re-election tour Monday included Bennettsville and the Dillon Inland Port, a shipping and logistics hub near Interstate 95.
At each stop, Rice said, he’s making a similar argument: Whether it was the Trump-era Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, helping get the inland port built, securing flood buy-out money, bringing in funds for beach re-nourishment or pushing forward the construction of Interstate 73, he’s worked to boost the economic fortunes of the counties he represents, Trump or no Trump.
“My whole campaign is going to be on effectiveness, have I been effective or not,” Rice said Monday. “And the people who support me recognize how effective we’ve been, how much we’ve done for our district, how our district has changed over the nine years I’ve been in Congress.”
But, because of his impeachment vote in January, Rice is adding his vision for the Republican Party onto that message.
“For people to say that I’m a RINO (Republican In Name Only), in other words not conservative, for voting to defend the Constitution, I don’t think they’ve really thought that through,” Rice said. “Defending the Constitution is the conservative vote and to defend a man who’s torn up the Constitution is not very conservative and that’s all that they, my opponents, ever say, ‘He voted to impeach Donald Trump.’”
It’s a question Republicans across South Carolina and the country have been wrestling with since Trump left office earlier this year. Earlier this month, at the South Carolina GOP’s inaugural “First in the South Republican Action Conference,” state and national party leaders warned against divisions in the GOP, some of which have emerged along Trump-caused fault lines. And while some leaders said they thought Trump could and should continue to lead the party, some loyal party members who attended the three-day conference said they were ready for a new face.
Still, Rice could have a tough crowd to sell his vision to. After all, several of his challengers — who have explicitly said they are running against Rice because he didn’t support Trump during his second impeachment — have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars each in their bid to oust him. And party members of the Horry County GOP — long the base of the 7th congressional district’s Republican voters — recently elected a slate of leaders who have defined themselves as loyal to Trump, embracing the idea that the party should follow both the man and his policies together.
Rice still maintains a significant fundraising edge, but acknowledged that he’ll have to work harder to sell his vision for the party and convince voters that he’s worth keeping in office.
“If you hadn’t noticed, y’all made my next campaign a little more interesting than the ones in the past,” he joked to the crowd in Florence.
To date, though, Rice said he feels optimistic that his vision will win out. He said that for every person who disagrees with his vote, 10 tell him they supported his move. The trend held true in Florence, Rice said.
“I had one guy ask me, ‘Why?’ I had five or six who said, ‘We appreciate you standing up,’” Rice said. “Even if you don’t agree with me, I hope you appreciate the principle that we have to defend the Constitution.”
Rice said he views his vision for the Republican party as one of the few ways the GOP could grow its ranks in the years to come. If he’s victorious in the June primary, Rice said he believes the party will be back on the right path.
“We need to embrace conservatives, the not-so-conservatives, the independents and maybe even try to pick off a few on the left because I believe our ideas are better than their ideas,” Rice said. “(The GOP) should be a party of ideas. To be a Republican, loyalty to Donald Trump should not be a litmus test to be a Republican. And if it is then we’re heading in the wrong direction.”
