Opinion: Playing tit for tat in the House

Pants on fire (U.S. House Office of Photography)

One day after meeting with Speaker-for-now Kevin McCarthy, serial fabulist George Santos told yet another lie. Of course he did.

In a meeting with Republican House colleagues, Santos told them he was temporarily stepping aside from his two House committee assignments until, as McCarthy would later put it, Santos “can clear everything up.” Meanwhile, McCarthy added, anyone named to the committees in Santos’ place would be serving on a temporary basis.

The problem — well, the latest problem — for Santos is that temporary, in this case, actually means forever because the surest bet in American politics today is that Santos will never clear up anything, much less everything.

The real question for Santos is how long he’ll remain in the House. According to the latest polling of his congressional district — New York’s 3rd — 78 percent said Santos should resign, including 71 percent of Republicans and 63 percent of those who say they voted for him last November.

McCarthy had named Santos to the least prominent committees he could think of — the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and the Committee on Small Business — but there’s nowhere to hide Santos. I mean, someone even found pictures of Santos dressed in drag in Brazil. Many in the LGBTQ community could only laugh. As we know, falsely accusing those in drag shows of grooming children is the GOP’s latest bizarre contribution to the never-ending culture wars.

It’s hard to hide when you’re being investigated by federal prosecutors for possible campaign finance fraud and when it seems every news site in America is looking to uncover yet another Santos fabrication. A New York Times story revealed how Santos’ résumé was either embellished or, in most cases, entirely made up.

And at last count — and thanks to New York magazine for the rundown — we have Santos lying about where he went to high school, where (or if) he went to college, his religion, his identity, his mother’s death being tied to 9/11, his grandmother’s status as Holocaust survivor, where he got his money, whether he has any money, whether he founded a dog charity. And, come on, did he really swindle a homeless vet out of $3,000 in GoFundMe contributions raised to save the vet’s dog?

Do I have to go on? And on? And on?

But the real lie — a more typical political fiction — is why Santos actually stepped aside. Obviously, McCarthy made him do it, surely threatening to call a caucus vote to remove him if Santos refused.

But why?

This is where it gets interesting. For one thing, after unilaterally kicking prominent Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell off the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence last week, McCarthy defended the move by saying he wanted people of “genuine honesty and credibility” on the committee. As if, you know, he hadn’t appointed the honest and credible Santos to two committees.

Secondly, it was a promised bit of revenge for Democrats’ 2021 removal of not-so-prominent House Republicans Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar from their committees. Of course, Greene and Gosar had made actual violent threats.

But here’s the real reason Santos had to go: McCarthy had promised to remove Democrat — and Lauren Boebert nemesis — Ilhan Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee for language that was seen by many as anti-Semitic and for which she has since apologized. Of course, Omar, the only Muslim in the House to wear a hijab and a member of good standing of The Squad, has long been a target of a certain recent former president, who once called the Minnesota Democrat “our secret weapon.”

McCarthy could fire House Intelligence Committee members on his own because it’s a select committee and the Speaker has that right, just as then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi could refuse to seat several Republicans on the Jan. 6 select committee. But to remove Omar, McCarthy needed a vote of the entire House, which he got last Thursday when a GOP majority of 218 voted aye.

In the runup to the vote, Ken Buck had said he wasn’t interested in retaliatory politics, even telling Chuck Todd on Meet the Press that Republicans “should not engage in this tit for tat.”

Though Buck eventually voted to remove Omar anyway, he’d made an excellent point. And it’s one that McCarthy — who needed 15 rounds to be elected Speaker and who, as part of the bargain, agreed to place himself at permanent risk of losing his job — will have to face time and time again.

Mike Littwin’s column was produced for The Colorado Sun, a reader-supported news organization committed to covering the people, places and policies of Colorado. Learn more at  coloradosun.com.