COLUMBIA — Top officials at the South Carolina Republican Party voted Saturday to censure U.S. Rep. Tom Rice for his vote to impeach former President Donald Trump, delivering a rare formal reprimand to one of their own congressmen.

The S.C. GOP executive committee approved a censure resolution that criticized Rice, a Myrtle Beach Republican starting his fifth term in Congress, for participating in a process that they argued unfairly pinned blame on Trump for inciting the deadly Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol, party officials told The Post and Courier.

“In the first and most consequential vote of the new session, Mr. Rice sided with (Democratic House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi and the unprincipled Leftists by voting to impeach the President, betraying the Republican voters that supported Mr. Rice enthusiastically during the last two election cycles,” the resolution said, according to a copy obtained by The Post and Courier.

Rice told The Post and Courier that he still stands by his impeachment vote even after the state party censure. He criticized the S.C. GOP leadership for not seeing how Trump stirred up protesters and failed to do enough to condemn the rioters as they ransacked the U.S. Capitol building to halt Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election results.

“I think the South Carolina Republican Party has forgotten its own creed that says, ‘I will cower before no man save my God.’ It seems to me they are cowering before Donald Trump,” Rice said. “If the president who did what Donald Trump did that day and sent a mob to stall Congress and the result was an attack on the legislative branch of the United States government, that is a clear violation of the constitution. It’s absolutely a high crime or misdemeanor. I don’t care if the president that does that is Republican or a Democrat, I’m voting for impeachment.”

Rice, who will likely face a fierce primary challenge to keep his seat even after supporting Trump’s presidential campaigns and fiscal policies, said he will continue to work S.C. GOP leadership after his censure, though he wished party leaders spoke with him before the vote Saturday...

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