By Nate Jackson
“Throw the bums out” is a saying as American as apple pie. And yet we rarely do actually throw them out; we just don’t like the other side’s congressmen from some other districts. So it’s almost humorous to see members of Congress come together in a bipartisan effort to throw out one of their own bums.
George Santos, the lying, cheating representative from New York, was expelled from Congress just before we went to press on Friday. It was only the sixth time that’s ever happened, and the first since 2002. Three of the expelled members were Confederates ousted 150 years ago.
As all the media headlines gleefully blared, Santos is a Republican, and the already slim GOP majority in the House just got slimmer unless a Republican can prevail in a special election in the coming weeks.
What the media quit highlighting some time back, however, is that Santos is also homosexual.
Obviously, it became really inconvenient really quickly to celebrate or even mention that facet of his messed up life when his lies were exposed. On top of being a liar, now he’s also charged with misappropriating campaign funds, defrauding donors, and identify theft — among 23 federal charges in all.
What really sets Santos apart, however, is that no congressman has ever been expelled without either fighting for the Confederacy or being convicted of a crime.
Expulsion under these circumstances sets a precedent that could spell trouble for a couple hundred other shysters in Congress. We couldn’t even count the number who’ve lied about their autobiographies (the president does that pretty much all the time), defrauded donors with lavish expenses, or made fraudulent campaign promises. What’s the limiting principle for expulsion now?
We’re not the only ones thinking about other candidates for expulsion.
“We have a colleague in the Senate that actually did much more sinister and serious kinds of things: Senator [Bob] Menendez,” opined Senator John “Hoodie” Fetterman. “He needs to go. And if you are going to expel Santos, how can you allow somebody like Menendez to remain in the Senate?” He added that “Menendez is really a senator for Egypt, not New Jersey. I really think he needs to go.”
Menendez has indeed been charged with bribery, but he has not yet been convicted, and the last time a senator was expelled for any reason was the War Between the States. So, paging Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
What about a few other select members of Congress? We’re thinking specifically of “Squad” members Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. Tlaib has vocally supported “the Palestinians,” and she has ties to Hamas, whose terrorists killed 1,200 Israelis and 33 Americans in October.
Omar is a tax cheat and home-wrecker who “married” her brother to flout U.S. immigration law. Her campaign has been accused of voter fraud. Earlier this year, she was booted from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Then there’s Representative Jamaal Bowman, the New York Democrat who illegally pulled a fire alarm to obstruct congressional proceedings and worked out a sweetheart deal for a slap on the wrist.
We could go on, but you get the idea.
We opened by joking about the unpopularity of Congress, so we’ll close with that paradox. Well over 90% of incumbents are reelected virtually every election cycle. In fact, Wikipedia has an article dedicated to “Congressional stagnation in the United States.” That’s a remarkable feat for a crew as universally hated as Congress. According to Gallup, Congress’s approval rating in November was 15% — slightly higher than dental work and cockroaches in the kitchen. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
