Matt Gaetz and the tyranny of the backbencher

A handful of Republican political exhibitionists have driven the news cycle so often in 2021 that you might mistake them for party leaders

Matt Gaetz.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

The lurid scandal rapidly enveloping well-known Trump ally and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) is obviously embarrassing for the GOP. No party leader wants to see one of their members accused of paying very young women, and possibly underage girls, for sex. But Gaetz is hardly the first politician to flame out in scandal and he won't be the last. The urgent task facing Republican leadership should be to ask how or why a man like Matt Gaetz became a prominent face of the party to begin with.

The details of Gaetzgate are disturbingly sordid even by the bog standards of Washington, D.C. The 38-year-old representative, now in his third term, allegedly recruited women to pay for sex along with another Florida politician who has already been indicted for sex trafficking, Joel Greenberg. The Department of Justice reportedly began an investigation last year into whether the payments made to these women violated federal sex trafficking and prostitution laws. Gaetz and Greenberg are also reportedly under investigation for targeting a 17-year-old girl with this scheme, committing statutory rape and trafficking by traveling with her across state lines.

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David Faris

David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. He is a frequent contributor to Informed Comment, and his work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Indy Week.