We were promised a Red Wave in the 2022 Midterm Elections. We knew that it would be an uphill climb. No Red Wave. We barely got a small red ripple. Even worse, the Republican Party did not bother vetting the candidates. Long Island Congressman-elect, George Santos, is an admitted liar. We, the Republican Party, cannot afford this type of stupidity.

The one bright spot in the 2022 Midterm Elections was Lee Zeldin. Although Zeldin, sadly, did not win the Gubernatorial race, but he did drag three Republican Congressional candidates across their finish lines. Now, George Santos has admitted to fluffing his resume. Fluff such a he never graduated from college and never worked for the two big Wall Street firms he claimed to have worked for.

From the New York Times:

Representative-elect George Santos admitted on Monday to misleading voters about his professional experience and educational history, confirming some of the key findings of a New York Times investigation that found he likely misrepresented his background to voters.

Mr. Santos, a Republican who was elected in November to represent parts of northern Long Island and northeast Queens, ended a week of near silence, giving interviews to two conservative-owned media outlets, The New York Post and WABC-AM radio.

Mr. Santos told The Post that even though he now admits to embellishing his résumé, it would not stop him from taking office.

“I am not a criminal,” Mr. Santos told The Post, adding he would still be an effective legislator. He told WABC radio that he still intended to be sworn in at the start of the next Congress

He is not a criminal. He IS a liar. Just what the Republican Party doesn’t need. What did he lie about? Um, EVERYTHING:

Over the course of his campaigns, Mr. Santos claimed to have graduated from Baruch College in 2010 before working at Citigroup and, eventually, Goldman Sachs. But representatives from the college and both companies said they could not locate records to confirm his graduation or employment.

In Monday’s interview, Mr. Santos admitted to The Post that he had not graduated from Baruch, nor had he graduated “from any institution of higher learning.”

Mr. Santos also said that he never worked directly for Goldman Sachs or Citigroup, even though he said in campaign biographies that he had worked directly for both companies, as he made his case to voters that he was a seasoned investor and financial professional.

But wait, there’s more. David Pakman, who has a podcast dedicated to his hatred of Republicans, claims that the Gay, Jewish Santos isn’t really Jewish. Oy:

This one I can see. George Santos may be ethnically Jewish through the matrilineal line. Some of the Holocaust survivors I met in Connecticut assumed Christian names to help them “pass”. I am not going to pass judgement on this one. The lying about college and work experience is beyond the pale. And, leads to Twitter posts like this one from Eric Fartwell Swalwell:

#BREAKING

Holy Smokes. @Santos4Congress just confessed to defrauding the voters of Long Island about his ENTIRE resume. RT if he should be banned from taking the oath for Congress. https://t.co/d3i2iXKWO3

— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) December 26, 2022

I am not gonna worry about anything from the guy who slept with Fang Fang. Plus, he probably held the ball while Creepy Joe played football at an HBCU.

Here is my big question:

WHO IS VETTING THESE CANDIDATES?

At the State and County levels, it should be the community leaders. Republicans NEED to do better. This article is from 2014:

“Who is responsible for the proper vetting of political candidates?”

In recent years, Republicans have done a disastrous job of responsibly vetting candidates running for state and national office. In 2010, Joe Miller from Fairbanks walked right through the primary process before any vetting was done regarding his history and campaign rhetoric. A majority of Republicans voted for him, and it wasn’t until after the primary election, when countless discrepancies in his record were exposed by the media, did his campaign go into meltdown mode and the Republican nominee lost a historic defeat to a write-in candidate.

Responsible vetting by the party would have prevented all of the turmoil the Republican Party went through that year.

Another case in point was John Lindauer’s gubernatorial campaign in 1998. This may have been the saddest example of lack of “quality control” by the Republican Party ever. Mr. Lindauer was a good-looking candidate with a good-looking resume and a fist full of cash. Unfortunately, the powers that be within the party structure didn’t vet his candidacy, didn’t verify where his money was coming from, and had no means of preventing him from running using the Republican label.

There is no excuse in this time of Social Media and no privacy. And why lie. You are going to get caught. I am sick, tired and disgusted by all of this.

Featured Image: Empire State Conservatives Podcast/Wikimedia Commons.org/Creative Commons