(Dobbs) Profiles in Courage Are In Short Supply

Politics makes sleazy bedfellows.

You might think it’s wrong for commentators like me to put so much focus on the self-serving sins of just one serial liar, the newly seated congressman George Santos. I’ll argue, it’s not. 

First, because fabricating everything from your college background to your work history to your family situation to your religion to your alleged charitable schemes to your alleged criminal behavior and even to your real name, all to get yourself elected, is no small sin. But more important, because the story’s not just about Santos. It’s about the Republican Congress in which he now serves. It’s about the party that has not, by and large, condemned him for his sins. It’s about the corruptible convictions of his leader in Congress, the Speaker of the House, a man just two heartbeats from the presidency.

Let’s start there. We saw earlier this month that Kevin McCarthy would sell his soul to the devil to win the Speakership. And he did. Not just by promising plum committee assignments to the most extreme elements of his caucus, proposing to populate the House Oversight and Accountability Committee with the unaccountable likes of Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene and other election deniers like Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry, Florida’s Byron Donalds, and Alabama’s Gary Palmer. I mean, really? These are the kinds of people McCarthy trusts with oversight and accountability??

Even Arizona’s Paul Gosar is back. Like Greene, who lost her committee assignments in the last session of Congress for being racist and anti-semitic, Gosar had been pulled from his committees after posting violent video threats against Democrats on the internet.

For good measure, McCarthy also gave a seat on the Homeland Security Committee to Greene, who along with these others was complicit in the plot two years ago to gut our homeland security and overthrow our government.

Which brings us to the unrepentant deceiver George Santos.

He didn’t do nearly so well. No plum committees for him! Just Science, Space, and Technology, and Small Business. Remember, this is the guy whose résumé was so full of falsehoods that we don’t really know what kind of business he ever ran, or for that matter, whether he has run one at all. All we know is that a man with a predilection for concocting business positions he never had and a reputation for incurring debts he never repaid said on financial disclosure forms that his own firm paid him $700,000, with another million or more in dividends, yet he couldn’t list a single client.

Then, there’s the latest: a Navy veteran named Rich Osthoff yesterday told CNN that Santos, who has claimed that he established a charity called "Friends of Pets United,” set up a GoFundMe for Osthoff’s pet, which had developed a tumor. But when Osthoff tried to access the money, he says, Santos never came through.

Even the non-profit GoFundMe.com itself says, “Our trust and safety team sought proof of the delivery of funds from the organizer. The organizer failed to respond, which led to the fundraiser being removed and the email associated with that account prohibited from further use on our platform.”

Taken as a whole, is all that enough to at least withhold any privileges from Santos in the House until an investigation proves him worthy or unworthy to serve? According to Speaker McCarthy, no. It’s a full month now since the disclosures about Santos’s deceptions and Kevin McCarthy hasn’t even hinted at denunciation. To the contrary, he has said that he will not put pressure on Santos to resign. His excuse last week at a news conference? “What I find is that voters have elected George Santos… They have a voice in this process.”

Of course his fellow Republicans didn’t feel that way about the voters’ will 25 years ago when they proceeded to impeach Bill Clinton.

Nor do they feel that way now about the voters’ will on Joe Biden, who was elected with a seven million vote margin. According to a University of Massachusetts Amherst poll the middle of last year— and not just coincidentally concurrent with the majority of Republicans who have said they believe the 2020 election was rigged— two-thirds of Republican voters thought the House should impeach Biden for high crimes and misdemeanors. Some of the most extreme members of today’s House have said they intend to make that happen.

It must be said, not every Republican has turned a blind eye to the embarrassing disrepute of the new congressman from New York. They’re not all profiles in courage but to at least a small degree they are profiles in principle or, at the very least, profiles in pragmatism.

First, the Republican chair in New York’s Nassau County, where Santos was elected, said, “He’s disgraced the House of Representatives, and we do not consider him one of our congresspeople.”

Then the newly elected Republican congressman from the neighboring district, Anthony D’Esposito, said he would urge “other representatives in the House of Representatives to join me in rejecting” Santos. On the heels of that, five more Republican congressmen from New York did exactly that, with Long Island’s Nick LaLota declaring, “What he’s done is disgraceful, dishonorable and unworthy of the office. I think he should resign.” Even James Comer of Kentucky, the new chair of the House Oversight Committee who already is racing on all cylinders to savage Joe Biden, said, “I don’t approve of how he made his way to Congress, and I haven’t even introduced myself.” 

Which brings us to the man who is still the most influential Republican of them all, Donald Trump. The Economist reports that the day before the unpatriotic uprising of January 6th, 2021, Santos spoke at a rally in Washington (wearing, according to a new revelation from The New York Post, a scarf he stole from a former roommate) and advocated for overturning the 2020 election, calling Trump “the best president in modern history since Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan.”

The trouble is, that might not be good enough for Trump, who introduced himself in a video a month ago as “hopefully your favorite president of all time. Better than Lincoln, better than Washington.”

But then again, if he wants to win back the White House, Donald Trump needs Kevin McCarthy, and if he wants to hold onto his slim majority in the House, Kevin McCarthy needs George Santos.

There’s a time-honored truism that says, “Politics makes strange bedfellows.” These days, “Politics makes sleazy bedfellows” is more like it. This photo from The New York Times proves the point.

Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 36-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.