George Santos, the Most Novel Con of All

The expelled congressman highlights the devolution of the Republican Party.

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Rep. George Santos arrives at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, November 30 to speak about the House Ethics Committee report ahead of his eventual expulsion from Congress. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

It was really the late 1990s when we started to see the emergence of the Novelty Cons—the people who figured out that there was a pretty good career path in Republican politics and conservative media that consisted simply of being something other than white and male while also being a conservative, or at least able to do a passable impersonation of a conservative. Of course, there had long been conservative women of several different stripes (Jeane Kirkpatrick, Phyllis Schlafly) and black conservatives (Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas), gay conservatives (a long tradition from Noël Coward to Marvin Liebman to a lot of people whose old friends still aren’t ready to hear about it), etc., but those were accomplished people with real portfolios. Nobody ever put Jeane Kirkpatrick on the cover of a book in a little black cocktail dress—nobody ever thought to, because readers reading a Jeane Kirkpatrick book knew why they were reading it. 

No, the Novelty Con offers something else: “I’m a college-educated white woman/black man/gay man/Latina/[some combination of the previous] under 40, and I am ready to repeat today’s GOP talking points!” That is the entire value proposition, but it works. Why listen to the Novelty Con? Why put the Novelty Con on television or on a stage? 

For the novelty, of course.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Another fantastic newsletter! Probably a top ten for 2023. I particularly liked the analysis of the Republican Party as a heartland, business, small-r republican party - would that it had become a multiracial business party rather than a populist party. Makes you long for the days of Irving Kristol’s “Stupid Party.”

    “ From Blackstone, we get one approach to the law; from Dershowitz, we get a different one.”

    That made me laugh!


    As usual, I enjoyed Econ for English majors. I wonder whether I should have been an Econ major.

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  2. Kgfroehle

    >Republicans have long been starved for novelty.

    It took four paragraphs before I discovered where this one was going.

    Now, in my admiration and enjoyment of KDW I am second to no one -- ok, maybe I am, there are limits -- but this claim leaves me aghast. I don't know about "RepublicanS", but this one (me!) was not into novelty. At least that kind, if you know what I mean. Hence, I was a Republican.

    Those days are gone.

    On to paragraph five. And another IPA.

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  3. Victony

    I am a refugee from NRO.
    It is good to read Kevin again

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  4. Avatar photo
    Jewls444

    “….men who grew uneasy in church anytime hands were raised above handshake level.” Plus two others, Salome and Frosty made me laugh out loud! It is great to get such wonderful writing and humor too! Thanks again Kevin.

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  5. Grafakos

    "the political version of whatever the opposite of a beard is"

    I laughed aloud!

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  6. Betsybowditch

    "Does anybody think for a second that if Rep. Santos thought embracing socialism or some other crackpot agenda would keep him in Congress and out of the workforce that he would hesitate to do it?"

    I think being a Republican is central to Santos’ identity. I have seen this in my own family. Claiming membership in the Republican Party means you are successful. I had an aunt who used to rail about people having babies to collect welfare. Her meager wages were supplemented by handouts from her mother all her life because she, like Rep Santos who is allowed to use that title for life, enjoyed nice clothes and tastefully furnished digs.

    Back in the 1990s I had an immigrant student tell me, “I am a Republican, I may be poor now but I don’t expect to be poor all my life.” He saw the GOP as the best bet to protect his future wealth. But as an undergrad his refugee parents couldn’t help him so he was going through college working part-time jobs AND through federally backed student loans.

    Santos desperately wants to be seen as successful. He is not one of those in the 47 percent whom Mitt Romney claimed “want free everything.” (I learned from the recent biography how sickened Mitt was to have uttered that in response to a question from a member of the wealthy audience about people who won't take responsibility for themselves.) Santos sees himself in that audience enjoying a fine meal and better wine that Justice Alito did on his Alaskan fishing trip!

    The irony is that though Santos railed against Joe Biden’s handling of the economy while campaigning for his seat, he himself suddenly did very well when Biden was elected after a lifetime of service-sector jobs like sales associate for a cable TV company. Before his upset victory, he was employed by a Florida business that has been identified as a Ponzi scheme.

    It is good Santos didn’t go to prison as a younger man because he would have just honed his hustle behind bars. When he is sentenced, he will be a notorious aging convict and doing time will be a lot harder.

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  7. Michael

    What exactly is the Republican Party supposed to do with these duly elected deplorables? The Party is like someone who opens their front only to find someone left a flaming bag of poop on the stoop. What do you do with it?

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  8. William James Sneeringer

    Excellent article; thank you. It is disturbing that Boebert and Greene and Santos and Gaetz ever thought that they might be competent to serve in Congress. It is stunning that we actually elected them. But now it is clear--if you run for Congress you will attract campaign funds which you can then spend fairly freely, if your accountant is reasonably clever. But if you actually win, then you've absolutely hit the jackpot. Thanks for the grammar lesson and thanks for drawing our attention to the reason for the season.

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  9. Boyce

    One thing that should be mentioned about the Prisoner's Dilemma Game is that it is in the class of full information games. That means that "I know your preferences, you know I know your preferences, I know that you know that I know your preferences..." That is, the PDG is not about information, it is about incentives. The PDG is also rare among games in that it has a dominant strategy, which is to say the Smith finds it in his interest to confess whether or not Jones confesses. The purpose of the PDG is to show that under such circumstances, the two players would be made better off if they could somehow commit to not confessing.

    Readers on information issues in economics may find Tyler Cowen's on-line book on the Greatest of all time (GOAT) Economist. The chapter on Hayek is quite good, and (not to reveal too much of whom Cowen thinks is the GOAT Economist), he does conclude that Hayek's 1945 paper "The Use of Knowledge in Society" is the single best economics paper ever written. Like Ronald Coase, who also knew a lot about costly information, Hayek was an excellent writer as well as a Nobel prize winning economist.

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    1. Brocka121

      Love Cowen and his newsletter

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  10. Avatar photo
    Mandy B.

    "...grew uneasy in church any time hands were raised above handshake level." A nice bit of writing.

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    1. BDM

      That's definitely me. I'm Catholic and the first time I went to an evangelical church with a friend, the first time someone jumped up and started yelling "Amen, alleluia!!!", I damn near soiled my britches. While the show was entertaining for a while, I was very happy when it was over.

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