12 January—Heavens to Betsy and Ohmygod! Politicians are up in arms because one of their own lied to get elected. Talk about the pot calling the kettle Black. (Am I allowed to write that?) Well, what they’re really up in arms about is that he actually admitted it.

Having taken the oath of office to serve as a Lon Gisland [sic—that’s how most people pronounce Long Island] representative in the 118^th Congress a few days ago, big bad liar George Santos refuses to resign. Yesterday, the holier-than-thou and squeaky clean Lon Gisland Republican establishment demanded that the confessed but arrogant master of mendacity, a fellow Republican, immediately give up the seat he rather brilliantly scammed his way into.

“He’s disgraced the House of Representatives and we do not consider him one of our congresspeople,” Nassau County Republican Committee Chairman Joseph Cairo Jr. said at a news conference Wednesday. After a campaign of “deceit, lies, and fabrication,” Cairo blustered, “I am calling for his immediate resignation,” adding that Santos was not welcome at Nassau County Republican Committee offices and that GOP officials in the county would no longer deal with Santos or his staff, effectively evicting the incumbent congressman from the county party.

Right on, Joe. You bloody self-serving hypocrite. You need George more than George needs you.

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman called Santos a “pathological liar” (which he certainly is—and he admits the liar part), “a stain on the House of Representatives.” He went on, “He needs help. This is not a normal person.” Ya think? But George probably doesn’t need the kind of help Bruce is suggesting. It sounds like sour grapes. (Incidentally, about a third of New York State’s 62 counties, depending upon their charters, have very powerful Gauleiters who are called county executives.)

The New York State Conservative Party chairman, Gerard Kassar, called on Santos to resign, because his “profound use of mistruths as a candidate morally disqualifies him from serving in public office” and exposes him to legal peril. Chairman Kassar should know better. It’s not against the law to lie in order to get elected. Rather, it’s a tradition, even a protocol, that virtually every candidate follows faithfully but tries and hopes to keep under the table.

Fellow Lon Gisland GOP freshman Representative Anthony D’Esposito, a 40-year-old former (retired?) NYPD detective, tweeted, “When public servants deceive and mislead those they are tasked with serving, they are no longer fit to work for the people. It has become clear that Congressman George Santos’ many hurtful lies and mistruths surrounding his history have irreparably broken the trust of the residents he is sworn to serve. For his betrayal of the public trust, I call on Congressman George Santos to resign.”

And lots more from other self-righteous—mostly New York—pols who have been lining up to crawl on the sanctimonious give-it-to-Santos bandwagon in an obvious effort to deflect attention from their own strategic mendacity. The the saintly Republican pols in Washington are somewhat less garrulous, of course, as they know that should George Santos resign, he’d almost certainly be replaced by a Democrat in a special election. And the GOP House majority is perilously slim as it stands.

That’s why Speaker Kevin McCarthy reminded the press, “The voters elected him to serve . . . He will continue to serve.”

Deceit, lies, mistruths, fabrication indeed. A thesaurus of redundancy. But aren’t lies and redundancy what politics is all about?

Those hypocritical Lon Gisland Republican bastards—sorry, upright politicians—are taking Santos to task for the very sort of divergence from truth (to put it gently) they all resort to in order to slither into office and stay there. Their real problem with George Santos is that he condensed and distilled the dishonesty so effectively that he was able to fool and thereby embarrass them—and make life more difficult for them in the bargain.

Lon Gisland Republicans have no one to blame but themselves that George got their nomination, because they didn’t perform due diligence. Lon Gisland voters and critics of both parties have no one to blame but themselves because they didn’t follow up on a lead in a local rag. Obviously, George Santos was a good, convincing candidate.

When pestered by reporters whether he’d resign, George simply said, “I will not.” Then he tweeted, “I was elected to serve the people of #NY03 not the party & politicians, I remain committed to doing that and regret to hear that local officials refuse to work with my office to deliver results to keep our community safe and lower the cost of living. I will NOT resign!”

Right on, George. You got yourself elected fair and square—as politics goes, anyway. Even Speaker McCarthy appears to be behind you. For now, anyway.

The Republican establishments in Lon Gisland and Washington will do everything they possibly (and impossibly) can to save face. Because that’s most important in politics. Congressman George Santos likely won’t get any committee assignments and will find himself in legislative purgatory. But I suspect he’ll stick it out and will diligently represent the constituents who bought his lies and put him in office . . .