Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

I’m not sure why getting rid of Rep. George Santos wasn’t closer to unanimous by members of Congress because it wasn’t one political deal where one party decides to pick on a member of the other party.

Some said he hadn’t been convicted of anything although he is under Federal indictment for a number of things related to his campaign.

Santos was the subject of a scathing report from the House Ethics Committee. The New York Congressman was in his first term. Among the things he did was use donor’s credit card numbers to make personal purchases. In fact one of his fellow Republican Congressmen took the floor to say Santos should go because he used both his credit card and his mother’s for personal purchases.

Republicans are the majority party in the House so the ethics committee report could not be claimed to be a Democratic hit job. Yet many who voted against expulsions said they felt he should have been convicted of a crime first.

In Minnesota’s delegation all the Democrats and Republican Pete Stauber voted for expulsion while the other Republicans voted against expulsion. I would guess that Stauber, as a former police officer, took a look at the evidence and didn’t need a judge and jury to convince him Santos was a crook.

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Santos seems to have no ethics at all. The report cites numerous violations of election finance rules. There is the credit card deal where he allegedly took over $40,000 from a list of nearly 400 contributors. This and the fact that most of his life history was fiction from his name to his college attendance and more. And he still says with a straight face that he did nothing wrong at all.

Nobody wanted him gone more than the Republican Party from the New York district he represents. They were mightily embarrassed as the tales about Santos’ background began to emerge. They asked him to resign then.  I suspect they’ll do a better background check on the candidate they support for the special election to replace Santos.

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I’m not sure why both political parties don’t have high ethical standards for their members. I can understand they want to stand by their men and women but when their members flaunt the law or bend rules to their personal favor they should be dealt with.

Maybe I’m setting an unrealistically high bar here but people like George Santos do a lot to damage the image of members of Congress. When Congress or political parties don’t have a very high bar for ethics people see that and probably can assume that kind of behavior is acceptable to Congress and the parties. It shouldn’t be.

That’s not a Republican or Democrat thing. People who represent us at the highest levels of government should be people who respect the law, respect their role and responsibilities as elected officials and respect the processes governing takes. That’s not to say one has to agree with everything, but if one does not agree there are processes to make change, and change is made on the basis of the desires of the majority. That’s how a democracy works.

Being a little more careful about whom they support might make life easier for the parties as well. Santos has been a Republican embarrassment. Democrats have Sen. Bob Menendez, now also under Federal indictment for acting as a foreign agent for Egypt. It is his second Federal indictment in the past eight years, in the first, a different case, charges were dropped when the jury could not reach a verdict.

Political parties have tremendous power through their purse strings and endorsements come election time.

They should exercise some of that power to insure that whether the candidate is a Democrat or Republican, the candidate is an ethical person unlikely to be an embarrassment to the office.