George Santos has been called a pathological liar, given the tales he told on the campaign trail. OMG, stop the press, a political candidate lied while running for office. The real scandal isn't that politicians lied; the real scandal is that no one vetted him.
Before the machines took over, there was a tremendous effort by political parties to go to every corner of the earth to try to find dirt on a political opponent and release it for an October surprise. At one time select universities house video archives of media reports, and media specialist would scour the archives searching for the tiniest scintilla of dirt-sometimes holding onto it for months just to try to sink a candidate. Now, in the era of machine and/or other forms of cheating, it seems everything is a nudge, nudge, wink, wink. What exactly is George Santos? I don't really care, but if he really is a psychopathic liar who infiltrated the system then certainly the swamp and republicans should be shaking if anything upsets their delicate balance of corruption.
The current chair of the RNC is not competent. She will not use the hundreds of millions nor her influence [or lack thereof] to challenge the swamp nor the machines, and the lack of Leadership has cost republican a house seat and secured a Rino in the senate at the detriment of American first-and even cost republicans the presidency. She seems more interested in flowers, spas, clothing, high end rent, private jets, and booze than she does in leading the party.
Even in the year of an election, just try to find a job for opposition research. No one recruits. Of the two companies I see in the linkedin results, one is for the benefit of progressive candidates, and the other is for classically liberal democrats. Some might construe classical liberal with libertarianism, but they are in business to help [southern] democrats and thus the democratic party's control to implement Marxist policies. It's just the way politics works, sadly; even a good guy on the other side of the isle still advances evil in a battle for the house speakership.
We live in an era where old newspapers are available [mostly] freely online, the media libraries are on youtube, access to a court docket and vital statistics are at our finger tips, and with relative ease we can see a person's connections on social media, their likes, and their posts. Maybe they used their username or profile pics on other sites, maybe they have personal websites, maybe a connected trail of email addresses, just a google or reverse image search away. Outside of interviewing people in person, there is little reason to get off the arm chair to do sufficient op research. So where are the republicans opposition researchers? Well not in the opposition research business apparently. Maybe we should be, but autistic folks aren't the best in marketing and do we really want to stick out necks out and dox ourselves, or just hide out on hive, telegrams, or 4chan? Let's say that on average it takes some 8 hours to dredge through a candidate's past, and with 435 congressman, 100 senators, and roughly twice that many candidate during an election cycle [and ignoring state seats] that would be 1000 people to do op research on. About 3 years work without pay, when the period for completion is a year more or less. Wouldn't take so long if the RNC didn't become a bunch of slackers, as incumbents on both sides would cut down the research in following years. It's just not feasible to research everyone by yourself. And the decentralize nature of op research is more when someone isn't acting right which then triggered them into action. Presently a lot of volunteers are researching the background of [non-politician] Eliza Bleu/siep for acts of censorship on twitter, I don't really want to deep dive an alleged camgirl-and and especially not an ugly one at that. But without a reason [censorship], no one would have even cared about her or her past. That is kind of the broken nature of relying on decentralization, it quickly becomes a decentralized effort of hundreds or even thousands of people to focus on one thing-which is pretty much all republicans seem to have anymore. In the prime days of anonymous, it might be a centrally declared op, and people could pretty much investigate and contribute what they can find. Now it seems the prime minister of every advanced economy was paid for by the WEF, and everyone blind sighted until they took all the farmlands away to starve, shut down the coal plants and left the people to freeze.
If the republican party cares about their own reputation and republican values, or want to proverbially snipe down some scandalous democrats early [or October surprise] (like what project veritas did in the South Carolina senate race), the RNC is going to have to invest in opposition researchers (aspies), some social butterflies field researchers (like what p.v. does), and software development to replicate and ultimately automate what the aspies do. The other alternative is an organized network of hundreds of volunteers, but that would only seem to be protecting the failed leadership of the RNC who only seem interested in getting RINOs elected.
Until the RNC gets its act together, it is going to see more people break through the firewall and completely trolls the establishment. I dunno how George Santos will vote; what he's proven is that in our present democracy only the most corrupt wins, and he bested both political parties and they are mad as hell as his victory undermines their lattice of control. The RNC will have to accept it needs new leadership, be more combative against the left, and be more proactive.
I suppose some could argue, do you want the RNC being a gateway of deciding who can and can't run for office [although they do this now] as a republican. Nothing says they have to attack their own; they could prepare for spin and damage control. Still to the extent that they might attack their own, thus violating the 11th amendment, it is up to the people in the primary to decide. Odds are that if a well prepared RNC can catch these things, so could a well prepared DNC. If the sink is going to sink anyways, I don't see it as the RNC being a gatekeeper per se. To the extent that they could oust a republican candidate with a hidden mild controversy while protecting a republican candidate with a hidden larger scandal, Again the remedy for this is trust that competition will lead the DNC into heavily investing in opposition research. Though, we still got the machines ; nudge, nudge, wink, wink.