Last week, as you may recall — and with recent events one could be forgiven forgetting — the House Republicans made history by boldly voting to sever their own head, deposing Speaker Kevin McCarthy in a maneuver where eight disaffected Republicans voted alongside the entire Democratic caucus to oust him from his position as punishment for negotiating a temporary debt-ceiling extension. The gang of Republican congressmen, led by Matt Gaetz, was a predictable list of longtime enemies of McCarthy and known grumblers from the House Freedom Caucus . . . plus the seemingly inexplicable addition of Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina’s first district.

I sought to explain her illogic last week, and instead of repeating myself I will simply commend that piece to you in whole (especially if you like Giotto). Now let me provide a recent update: After last week’s display of intellectual consistency and steady temperament, Mace yesterday appeared on the floor of the House wearing a tight T-shirt emblazoned with a badly drawn red “A” on it. When queried about the reasons for her eye-catching sartorial choice, she responded by saying, “I’m wearing the scarlet letter after the week I just had, being a woman up here, and being demonized for my vote and for my voice,” thus immediately revealing to the world that she had neither practiced her line for the media nor bothered to read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book (or even a Wikipedia plot summary of it).

Today, after a near-miracle in the GOP House conference meeting, where Steve Scalise edged out Jim Jordan among the caucus for the speaker’s nomination and Jordan immediately dropped out to endorse him in a move for unity, guess who was there to announce her mavericky maverickness? That’s right, Nancy Mace was back out there again, flailing around blindly: “I personally cannot, in good conscience, vote for someone who attended a white supremacist conference and compared himself to David Duke. I would be doing an enormous disservice to the voters I represent in South Carolina if I were to do that.” The reference to Duke is over an old scandal that surfaced before Scalise became GOP whip in 2014, where he addressed a rather sketchy conference in 2002. Since then he has served for a nearly a decade in Republican leadership and also incidentally caught a bullet from a politically motivated madman that nearly killed him. Mace’s objection to him is neither sincere nor something she has ever raised before. It does, however accomplish two things: (1) It keeps her name in the news; (2) It keeps her on the right side of Donald Trump, whose wrath she is terrified of and who endorsed Jim Jordan before the House Republican caucus bucked Trump.

So it bears reminding: Nancy Mace is not a serious person. Or at least, not serious about anything except staying on the right side of a primary challenge and in the good graces of Donald Trump.