Color me at least mildly surprised. Earlier today, several key House Republicans had come out publicly to announce that they would not vote to expel George Santos (R-NY) over fraud and ethics charges, including Speaker Mike Johnson and whip Tom Emmer. As I mentioned to Duane Patterson during our Week in Review show (which will go up later today), I assumed that would convince most of the GOP caucus to back down.

Instead, nearly half voted to give Santos the boot, only the sixth member of the House of Representatives to be expelled, ever. It took a two-thirds vote of the entire chamber, which today’s roll call vote put at 284 votes. It wasn’t even close:

HOUSE HAS EXPELLED SANTOS

311-114-2

105 R YES VOTES

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) December 1, 2023

The House voted Friday to expel GOP Rep. George Santos, a historic vote that will make the New York congressman the sixth lawmaker ever to be expelled from the chamber.

The New York congressman has survived prior attempts to oust him, but there has been growing momentum for this latest effort after the House Ethics Committee released a long-awaited report in November, which concluded that Santos “sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit.”

A number of Republicans who previously did not support Santos’ expulsion have said they would now vote to expel him as a result of the Ethics panel’s findings, though it was not clear ahead of the vote if there would be enough support to oust the congressman.

Two days ago, there seemed to be more momentum, and Santos certainly felt it. Rather than attempt to offer some sort of atonement, however, Santos decided to play the victim and offer attacks on Republicans who pushed expulsion. Santos tried a diversionary tactic yesterday by filing a privileged motion to expel Jamaal Bowman over his obstructionist fire-alarm stunt, but that vote would come later — if it comes at all. There’s not much clarity on whether the motion survives Santos’ expulsion, and in Bowman’s case, Democrats are much less likely to impose a penalty.

So what now? Republicans now have a four-seat majority in the House, which really doesn’t change much for them at all in this session. They can now claim some moral high ground for dealing decisively with scandal, but that probably doesn’t do much outside of the very short run, politically speaking. The NY Republicans in the House will have a slightly easier time running for re-election without the specter of Santos, but even that’s debatable.

About the only win for the GOP from this episode is that Republicans can claim to have done the right thing. And that’s undeniable in Santos’ case. That should be enough.