As a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rice helped draft what became the party’s hallmark 2017 tax cut legislation. He supported building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. He supported Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods. He defended Trump during his first impeachment, saying “he has been the target of an astounding barrage of lies, deceit, and corruption.” And he objected to certifying the 2020 election results from Pennsylvania and Arizona that Trump falsely said were fraudulent... “It was very clear to me, I took an oath to defend the Constitution. I didn’t take an oath to defend Donald Trump. What he did was a frontal assault on the Constitution,” he said over coffee at Sunshine Pancake House in Loris, S.C., on Wednesday. Now that vote threatens to end his career as he faces several potential primary opponents who strongly support the former president. And that race will have a broader meaning for his party, serving as a test case for whether a solidly conservative lawmaker, long popular in his district and loyal to the party, can be cast out by GOP voters for the lone sin of crossing Trump. “What do you call somebody who votes with Trump 99 percent of the time? A traitor,” Rice said with a chuckle recalling a joke he had read several months ago.