OK the Santos expulsion is not succeeding, it’s not going to even get a majority as there are D votes to keep him in.
(The Tlaib censure failed with R votes against. The MTG censure was not brought to a vote in this round.)
Forgive my naivete, but why would Democrats vote that way?
He is the gift that keeps on giving, when it comes to making Republicans look bad.
Wow. If I had a say in voting out the lying-ist Republican this side of Donald Trump, I’d have to go with my conscience and smash the gong.
It is unprecedented to eject a Member absent treason or a criminal conviction. Some Democrats are wary of the precedent.
OK, that’s plausible I suppose…
The expulsion vote lost, 19 voted present.
There is a House Ethics Committee investigation of Santos ongoing. Those members shouldn’t be prejudging the results of their own investigation. I don’t see a roll call after a quick web search, but that may account for most of the present votes.
Voting present sounds good to me. It minimizes prejudicial pretrial publicity regarding Santos’s trial scheduled for next year.
It seems like that horse has long since left the barn. The Republicans don’t seem to feel that they are any universal principles. They feel there’s one set on rules for Republicans and one set of rules for Democrats.
So just because the Democrats didn’t expel Santos because he hasn’t been convicted yet doesn’t mean the Republicans will hold to the same standard when they feel like expelling a Democrat. They’ll kick out a Democrat because they heard a rumor he once thought about breaking a law.
IMHO, the democrats not voting to expel are hoping that he’ll keep damaging his district for Republicans, and the Republican reputation in general (to the point that it reaches the teensy-tiny percentage of truly ‘neutral’ voters).
In terms though of kicking him out otherwise, I don’t see any need to wait for conviction, the mere fact that he has publicly admitted to falsifying his entire persona and background during his election would have been enough, in a saner age, for his own to have kicked him out, much less the opposing party.
So yeah, politics.
ETA - by a prior age, I’m talking around Gary Hart era or so, certainly not the last few decades.
Because of the 2/3 constitutional threshold, for the foreseeable near/mid future a unilateral partisan expulsion is not a realistic prospect.
On this matter apparently leadership left it to each member to do as they best considered, and the process is a political not a judiciary process – so in fact, yes, they could have removed him for his terrible taste in pullovers if they so wanted to, but they can also want to not remove him because it is politically expedient for both sides. The R members who put forth the privileged motion would have been fully aware that the larger conference would be thinking of one of the four precious votes they can afford to spare, and to the Dems he is just an albatross on the other side – I mean those 4 New York Republicans made the motion as the ultimate maneouver to distance themselves from him, a year before the election.
The votes were: to remove, 24R, 155D; to not remove, 182R, 31D; present 4R 15D; 11 absent from each delegation.
23 Republicans voted to table the motion to censure Rashida Tlaib today, resulting in its defeat.
Jamie Raskin (D - MD 08) released the following press statement along those lines:
That was well said. Raskin is alright.
You misspelled “worse”.
Dan
While I agree with the outcome of this vote (the House Ethics Committee hasn’t even reported on its investigation and the resolution was only initiated because NY Republicans are getting nervous how he’ll impact their reelection), I think the precedent of refusing to expel absent a criminal conviction should be viewed as a “soft” precedent. The data is skewed by the fact the many scandal-plagued politicians resign before they can be expelled. And the short terms in the House mean that voters often get to render their verdict before their fellow legislators can.
There’s plenty of behavior short of a criminal conviction that could warrant expulsion. But I agree with Raskin that there at least needs to be House internal due process to substantiate the allegations that might warrant expulsion.
OK, but you do think that Santos should resign, right? That’s one of the reasons why there haven’t been more expulsions – when it looked like it might go that way, the person resigned.
Santos should have resigned when all of his resume lies were found out. Then he should have resigned again after the first indictment, and now he should super-resign. Agreed?
I agree with every word Congressman Raskin wrote. Good on him.
yes, he should have resigned when his house of cards started to tumble. some people just missed the couth train.
Nothing like a Republican for making Republicans look bad.