George Santos Is Not an Aberration. He’s the Poster Child for the MAGA GOP | Opinion

By now, everyone has heard the story of Congressman-elect George Santos (NY-3), who has admitted to telling a host of blatant lies about his education, employment, and even ethnic and religious backgrounds during his campaign. Santos’s “embellishments” as he called them include claiming that he attended Baruch College and NYU, that he had worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, that he founded and ran a charity that the IRS has no record of, that he was a “proud American Jew” whose ancestors had escaped the Holocaust, and perhaps most disgustingly, that he was directly affected by the tragic mass murder at Pulse Nightclub and lost employees there.

Santos’ deception may not have stopped there. He claimed he earned a salary of $750,000 and up to $5 million as owner of Devolder Organization but failed to disclose client information, and Nassau County prosecutors have opened an investigation into Santos.

Even some Republicans have started to condemn Santos’s lies. And yet, Santos is not an aberration for the modern, MAGA-controlled Republican Party, but the opposite: a poster child for its fundamental belief in winning over probity and honor.

U.S. Representative-elect George Santos (R-NY) speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition annual leadership meeting on November 19, 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada. It has since emerged that Santos fabricated large parts of his resume. Scott Olson/GETTY

Despite being taken to task on Tucker Carlson Tonight by former Democrat turned right wing media star Tulsi Gabbard and fellow GOP Congressman-elect Nick Lalota calling for a “full investigation” into the matter and perhaps involving law enforcement, Santos has been given the gift of silence from Republican leaders, especially House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Santos wisely pledged support for McCarthy’s bid for the speakership once Republicans take control of the House, and McCarthy will need every vote in the GOP caucus that he can get to become Speaker.

After a disappointing midterm election cycle for Republicans where they took the House majority by the tiniest of margins, the Party’s loudest voices know that forcing one their own to resign and opening that district up to a special election could be disastrous. It is yet another example of the modern GOP putting political considerations before integrity.

But Democrats, too, must acknowledge their failures in this case. Some of the information about Santos’ fraudulent claims was reported by local media. The North Shore Leader questioned how the Brazilian American candidate went from a net worth of less than $5,000 to $11 million in two short years. The DCCC produced an 87 page document that did not question Santos’ easily verifiable lies about his education and professional experience, focusing instead on his anti-abortion stance.

Still, the biggest issue that the Santos scandal reflects is the Trumpian rot of American right wing politics. The GOP used to be a party that touted “family values” and claimed to represent “moral majority” voters. The MAGA wave changed all of that. Trump himself has mysterious finances, created questionable charities, and started a for-profit scam university.

MAGA voters looked the other way to all that, which paved the way for unscrupulous characters like Santos to seek public office.

The inflection point was the release of the Access Hollywood tape. Millions of former “family values” voters, including a majority of white women and Evangelical Christians, decided that a candidate making misogynistic comments about grabbing women by their genitals without getting prior consent was acceptable.

The GOP has only devolved since then, repeating election lies and running candidates with no discernible character.

Santos may be the Anna Delvey of politics, but there are others of his ilk. J.R. Majewski, a GOP congressional candidate from Ohio, more than likely overstated his military service. Majewski said he was an Air Force combat veteran who had been deployed to Afghanistan and that he had gone 40 days without a shower under the harsh conditions. During the course of the campaign, it came out that Majewski lacks both an Afghanistan campaign medal, which is issued to military personnel who “serve 30 consecutive days or 60 nonconsecutive days” in Afghanistan, nor a Global War of Terror Expeditionary Medal which preceded its creation.

Herschel Walker was exposed as being violent with women, threatening violence against the police, not being an active father in his children’s lives, and paying for the abortions, the very medical procedure that he claimed to want to end.

McCarthy will ignore Santos and his pathological lies, which includes leveraging the pain of mass murder victims for his own gain, because he wants to win. Other Republicans will remain silent because they want to own the libs in congress. Gone are the days when Republicans held their own president to account for Watergate.

MAGA supporters would rather arm themselves with “whatabouts” than demand integrity and accountability. A Party that continues down this path is untenable.

Dr. Jason Nichols is an award winning senior lecturer in the African American Studies Department at the University of Maryland College Park and was the longtime editor-in-chief of Words Beats & Life: The Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.