Has Matt Gaetz become the most hated man in Congress, by both sides of the political aisle?
According to sources the answer is a resounding “yes!”. What’s more to the point, USA Today suggests that there are already secret hopes to expel Gaetz if the ongoing investigation into his activities by the Ethics Committee should provide any excuse for it.
The Committee is looking into allegations that the congressman “may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift.”
Ever since Gaetz forced the ouster of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., from the speakership, even some of his former supporters have soured on him, holding him largely responsible for the chaos that reigned in the subsequent weeks.
Gaetz led the handful of Republicans who voted to remove McCarthy from the top job in the House earlier this year. After the lawmakers voted with Democrats to boot McCarthy, it led to weeks of infighting in the already-fractured Republican conference to select another leader. While lawmakers eventually—and reluctantly–elected Mike Johnson, R-La. as Speaker, they wasted precious time as they were trying to reach a temporary agreement to avoid a government shutdown.
The expulsion of disgraced Representative George Santos, long in the making, was heatedly opposed by Gaetz who argued that expelling a member who had not yet been convicted of a crime would overturn the precedent set by Congress in modern times. Gaetz openly defended Santos on the House floor.
“I rise not to defend George Santos whoever he is, but to defend the very precedent that my colleagues are willing to shatter,” Gaetz said last week.
One House Republican, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about conversations between their colleagues, said GOP members were well aware of the future consequences of expelling Santos.
“There were a number of people who voted to expel Santos with the express intent of thinking through the precedent there on what happens next,” the member said. “There was a lot of forethought about the precedent and what would happen when a report on Gaetz comes out.”
If that is the case, then Gaetz’s resounding defense of Santos was more out of self-interest than a belief in his innocence or respect for the precedents of Congressional procedures.
USA Today, referring to their anonymous source, wrote, “GOP lawmakers, the Republican said, are much more ‘excited’ to expel Gaetz than Santos if the House Ethics Committee releases a report that is just as damning for Gaetz as it was for the Long Island Republican.”
Another Republican who also spoke on the condition of anonymity said that members are waiting for any ethics report on Gaetz to be released before publicly calling for his ouster and added, “If there’s anything in there that’s bad, I can guarantee people will have their fangs out. He is hated in our conference,” the House Republican said of the GOP conference’s attitude towards Gaetz.
“If he comes back as guilty in this ethics thing, I think he’s in trouble.”
