No, House Republicans Did NOT Do the Right Thing on the Vote to Expell George Santos
Most Republicans Voted to Let Him Remain in Congress, Including Speaker Johnson
The Republican controlled U.S. House voted Friday to expel serial liar, grifter, con man and thief George Santos from the US House of Representatives.
“Finally!” you may be shouting. “At last, Republicans did the right thing and are finding their way back to being responsible party!”
Actually, no.
That is not what the vote to expel Santos means, because with their vote on the question of whether Santos should be expelled or not expelled, most Republicans in the House did the wrong thing.
Granted, some Republicans did find their way to the right position on this issue:
U.S. Rep. Mike Guest (R-Miss), Chair of the House Ethics Committee, led the House Ethics Committee investigation of Santos. The committee issued a scathing report of Santos’s rampant, wall to wall, corruption, and Guest introduced the resolution to expel Santos. Well done, sir!
All freshmen New York Republican Representatives called on Santos to resign back in January. So did the then-chair of the New York Republican Party. More than a dozen of Santos’ Republican colleagues had publicly called for his resignation or expulsion. Again, well done!
Even Iowa’s all Republican congressional delegation did the right thing: on Friday, all four Iowans in the House, Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-1st) , Ashley Hinton (R-2nd), Zach Nunn (R-3rd), and Randy Feenstra (R-4th) voted to expel Santos. They cast the right vote.
Some Republicans - a few - who voted to let Santos stay the previous two votes the House took on expelling him, both of which failed, switched their votes this time.
They were the exceptions, however, not the rule, among House Republicans on the vote to send Santos packing. A majority of Republicans voted Friday to let him stay.
Santos was expelled by a 311 - 114 vote. A majority of the “Yes” votes to expel Santos came from the Democrats in the House, not Republicans who control it and run the place. Democrats provided 66 percent of the “YES” votes to expel; Republicans provided only 33% of the “YES”. votes to expel.
Only 105 House Republicans voted to expel Santos. Most House Republicans - a majority of them, 112 House Republicans specifically, voted to let Santos stay. They provided 98 percent of the “NO” votes to allow Santos to remain in Congress.
Corruption? Pathological lying? Grifting, theft, converting campaign funds to absurd personal use like Botox, personal vacations, dozens of likely illegal expenses, all while filing false disclosure reports to hide his rampant misuse of campaign funds and lie about his “wealth?” Not a problem for a majority of House Republicans casting votes on Santos’ future in the House.
The House Ethics Committee compiled a 56 page report detailing Santos’ corrupt acts. A majority of House Republicans, said with their votes, none of it matters. Let him stay and continue to peddle his lies and corruption under the banner of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Among the Republicans voting to let Santos stay and continue to stink up the House? Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). Let that sink in.
It will be hard to keep from laughing when he comes to town to campaign in the 2024 election campaign and starts to preach about the integrity of Republican candidates - a virtue his vote just made clear he doesn’t even see as part of the basic job description.
At this point in the session, House Republicans have some pretty thin gruel to take to voters in 2024 when it comes to their accomplishments. Essentially, they’ve got two things:
Republicans in the US House didn’t shut down the government in November, even though they tried. The government didn’t shut down because a minority of Republicans joined with a large majority of Democrats to prevent the shut down, at least until mid-January when Republicans will try again.
Democrats provided 209 of the 336 votes - 62% of the votes - that saved the country from a catastrophic end of the year government shut down, right before the holiday season. The American economy dodged that bullet, but you can’t thank Republicans for it.
Republicans provided 98% of the votes to proceed with a November shut down, with the votes coming from 42% of House Republicans. Democrats provided 98% of their votes to prevent the shutdown.
The US House expelled a serial liar, grifter, and thief from the House, Republican George Santos. Again, you can’t thank the Republicans for that. They did not provide a majority of the votes to do that. Democrats did.
Santos was expelled by a vote of 311-114. Democrats provided 206 of the 311 votes to expel Santos - 66% of those votes to expel.
The 105 Republican “YES” votes to expel Santos accounted for only 33 percent of the votes to expel Santos. The 112 votes cast by Republicans to let Santos stay cast accounted for a whopping 98% of the votes to let him to stay, and came from over half the Republicans voting on the issue. The two votes cast by Democrats to allow Santos to remain in Congress came from less than 1 percent of the Democrats in the House.
In other words, it turns out that what little Republicans have to “brag” about in 2024, they actually had little to do with achieving. Their party didn’t really vote to support either “accomplishment.”
Had the Republican party’s position - as measured by their actual votes on the House floor - prevailed on those two issues, the government would have shut down in November, the economy would have gone into a catastrophic tailspin because of it, and George Santos would still be in Congress.
Bottom line: They are still the party that can’t govern; the party whose policies and practices will nose dive the economy; the party that sees lying as just part of the political game; and the party that still sees integrity as just another word in the dictionary, nothing to live by, and certainly not a basic requirement for those in public office.
Surprised all four Iowa Republican representatives voted to expel him.
Well, I guess I'm dumb. I figured the House leadership was giving him up as a precedent and pretext to expel political enemies, like, maybe Rep. Tlaib.
He's threatened retaliation against those of his own party. Be interesting to see who he goes all "Sammy the Bull" on.
I may have missed this in the news coverage, but Rep. Santos is the first Republican to be expelled from the House. The other five were all Democrats. Rep. James Trafficant of Ohio, who I recall got a lot of free air time in a "60 Minutes" piece on his outspokenness, was the last one to be expelled, in 2002 after his conviction on 10 criminal counts of bribery, fraud, obstruction of justice and racketeering. Prior to that, it was Michael J. Myers, D-Pa., expelled in 1980 after a bribery conviction in the FBI's Abscam sting operation.
The there was incumbent Rep. Adam Clayton Powell D-N.Y., who was not expelled, but excluded from Congress by his Democratic leadership after his re-election in 1966 amid allegations of misapprpriation and other matters. His seat was declared vacant. He sued and was elected again in 1968. Six months after he was seated, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in his favor, that he had been unconstitutionally excluded from office.
The other three Congressmen were kicked out in 1861 for supporting the Confederate rebellion in the Civil War. Speaking of which, how many members of Congress voted against upholding the 2020 election results? And how many of those voted against expelling Rep. Santos?