Expelling George Santos Did Not Set a Bad Precedent

gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 210 points –
Expelling George Santos Did Not Set a Bad Precedent
newrepublic.com
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Frankly, it would be bad precedent if he wasn't expelled.

It has already set a bad precedent because a) he didn't resign on his own after all what became public knowledge and b) that it took so long to get rid of him after is was clear that he had no honor left.

The best time to hold Republicans accountable was 60 years ago when they were trying to foment a race war and sabotaging US led peace talks in Vietnam to win a presidential election. The second best time is today.

Some might say “Expelling George Santos set a good precedent”

I am one of those people. He is a conman and a criminal, end of story. This isn't some political gray area here.

In theory, yes. In practice, he had to be everything Republicans hated for them to vote against him. I don't believe his lies or suspicious finances were the problems.

The true things about him that got his party to vote against him were: he's gay, he's brown, he's done drag, his Wikipedia page doesn't have a birth place.

I can think of about 50 Republicans and 1 Democrat that also need to be booted.

I think you're about 200 Republicans and maybe a dozen Democratic lawmakers low

Quick edit; I'm thinking across both houses of Congress with this count

Only 50 and 1? I'm thinking quadruple the first number and make the second one what you made the first one. That should get rid of the most corrupt members of the House,.including the top leadership of both parties.

In the Senate I'm thinking 40 of one, 20 of the other.

White House: most cabinet positions, president and vice president are too corrupt and/or incompetent so replace those.

Lauren McFerran can definitely stay. She's doing magnificent work at the NLRB. Probably the best the agency has been doing in my 40 year lifetime.

7 more...

I'd like to see more expelled. Starting with those that signed on for OJ's (Orange Jesus) coup.

Also, is there any chance that Santos goes to prison?

Probably, he went after rich people's money for his own gain, not their's or the party's goal.

Does he get any retirement benfits or not

He didn't do 5 years, so most likely not. And if the new bill about expelled representatives goes through, it will we upgraded to no.

Only republicans think that removing a cancerous tumor is a bad thing.

It can be both. Very specifically, expelling someone who hasn't been convicted of anything is bad precedent. But it's also necessary when the crimes are this obvious, this tied in to his job as congressman, and the legal system moves as slow as it does.

expelling someone who hasn't been convicted of anything is bad precedent

In most cases, I would agree with this. In the case of Santos, I do not. He ran his campaign claiming to be several things he is not. When that information was discovered, I think that would be enough to throw him out. At the point of knowing his entire persona was lies, he was not the person the people elected.

Yes it did! Now I can't STEAL MONEY from my Constituents!

I want him gone too, but saying the impact has been minimal a week after his expulsion seems a little myopic.

Crimes aside, his open & admitted lies alone should have been enough to expel him.

Yes, but that would require republicans to come up with impossible things, like integrity.

I acknowledge George Santos as rightful president of the united states.

If you want to credit somebody, credit the Republican congressmen from New York who early on went after Santos and hung in there to completion. They were afraid he would put their seats in jeopardy

Bro literally did the bare minimum to hold a colleague accountable for embezzlement. The reason why we haven't used expulsion for this before is that most other times someone is caught with so much overwhelming evidence against them and a unanimous bipartisan ethics committee determination, their party distances themselves from the appearance of corruption by calling on them to resign.

Rather than credit people who did the bare minimum in their duties to stand up against blatant corruption, maybe we should be instead looking at the Republicans and Democrats who voted Nay, Present, or Not Voting and asking them why they think this kind of corruption is okay.

As I said, they did what they could and stuck with it even against their own caucus.

They were afraid he would put their seats in jeopardy

You should also remember that if Santos hadn't been a threat to their own personal power they never would have supported anything like this because they're Republicans, and the Republican party has only been a vehicle for amoral hacks willing to garrote their own grandmothers' for power and social status and the completely braindead bigots who gets used as the hacks' foot soldiers for several generations now