Posted on 04/29/2010 9:03:08 AM PDT by ConjunctionJunction
Don't let the disproportionately white, bourgeois folks the Pay-Nay-Pays always send to lobby gullible Republicans fool you: PR is a a different animal in many ways, and will pull congress to the Left.
That is a really good read, thanks.
The brazenness of this congress is disgusting.
They are also going to try and give DC statehood.
The Dems think that Puerto Ricans are all leftists. Man are they in for a BIG wakeup!
The majority of Puertio Ricans are not politically active, BUT the majority of Puerto Ricans are VERY conservative Roman Catholics.
The Dems are actually moving to INCREASE the overall number of Conservative voters.
What, maybe only 85% Democrat?
I would call mine, but he is a flat out socialist who has voted with the Rat Party against the people 100% of the time since Obastard was elected. But I have written my two senators.
Unfortunately, those from MA (or NY or IL or NJ or CA...) know how supposedly conservative RC immigrants vote once they move into the US system and resources.
Mine, too! LOL!
I don’t think the initial two senators would be appointed (when AK and HI became states, they had Senate elections prior to the effective date of admission so that they would have two elected senators from the get-go), but if they were appointed, Gov. Fortuño, who is a Republican, would either appoint two Republicans or, in the spirit of bipartisanship, a Republican and a Democrat.
That may be true for New England, but not for the entire nation.
I mean just think, we can soon buy some beach front in Puertio Rico, which is essentially a conservative body polituic.
I agree with you that only residents of PR (not persons born in PR but living elsewhere) should get to vote in a status plebiscite. Not only do PR-born residents of the 50 states already have a say in the process (given that they elect members of Congress, and Congress has the last say on any change in PR’s political status), but handing out the right to vote based on the citizen’s origin is unconstitutional (as SCOTUS reminded us a few years ago when it struck down a Hawaii law that allowed only descendants of pre-1893 Hawaii citizens to vote for members of some commission).
Some people argue that voters in PR have rejected statehood in the past and that it’s clear that they don’t want statehood. Do you know what voters in PR don’t want? The current territorial status, which got 0.1% of the vote in the 1998 plebiscite. And full independence is supported by less than 5% of the population. Voters in PR are split among those who want statehood, with all of its rights and obligations, and those who want the U.S. to continue to send billions of dollars to PR while continuing to grant U.S. citizenship to all who are born there but not to levy federal income taxes on the Island’s residents. If your home state was given the option of not having to pay federal income taxes in return for not having voting representation in Congress, but would still receive billions of dollars in subsidies, don’t you think that you could convince half of the voters to take the deal for as long as Congress was stupid enough to offer it?
Conservatives are being short-sighted and foolish by supporting the ingrates that want the benefits of U.S. citizenship and subsidies without the responsibilities, all because of the myth that voters in Puerto Rico would vote the same as second- or third-generation descendants of Great-Depression-Era PR migrants to NYC or Chicago. The electorate in PR is most similar to that of Louisiana—pro-life, pro-marriage, pro-military and very religious, but economically populist, protectionist on trade matters and tolerant of a certain level of corruption. Louisiana (LA) is a classic swing state, voting for the winner in every presidential election berween 1972 and 2004, and it would not surprise me if PR had voted the same way as LA in those elections. PR-born voters in Central Florida gave comfortable majorities to Jeb Bush in 2002 and George W. Bush and Mel Martinez in 2004 (the 2004 exit polls showed Puerto Ricans in Central Florida giving 50% of the vote to Bush, but like 1/3 of them were mainland-born Puerto Ricans that largely voted for Kerry), and in PR right now the Governor, the Senate President, the Speaker of the House, the Mayors of the 100+ population cities of San Juan, Bayamon, Ponce, Guaynabo, Arecibo and Toa Baja, and majorities in both houses of the state legislature are Republicans. No one can predict with certainty how the electorate in PR will vote if the Island becomes a state, but it is far likelier that they will elect one Senator from each party and 3 Representatives from each party than the all-Democrat delegation that people ignorantly assume that PR would elect.
There are at least 20 states that you should support kicking out of the Union before even considering keeping PR out because it isn’t conservative enough.
Just where is that not the experience? Once they realize how many low-income benefits that big-government votes would send to their country, believe me—they’d all find religion!
I think that it is unfair that DC residents don’t have full voting rights, but obviously DC is a smal lcity and should not be its own state. I do support a larger State of New Columbia that includes not only DC but also Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties in MD and Arlington and Fairfax Counties and Alexandria, Falls Church and Fairfax cities in VA, which would result in VA becoming a safely GOP state and MD becoming a swing state: http://auh2orepublican.blogspot.com/2005/08/fair-and-reasonable-alternative-to-dc.html
They are likely to hold the vote as soon as possible and use the “Tennessee Option” to send a delegation to demand seating. I suspect they have the candidates already planned out.
As long as Howard County (where I live) stays in MD, I’m in.
Time to fight fire with fire...the ‘rats want PR and Washington; we go for Alberta and Poland.
The “Tennessee Plan” is the brainchild of former state senate president Charlie Rodriguez, but it is a gimmick to obtain publicity, not a serious attempt at seating members of Congress. PR would have to hold elections for the House and Senate after Congress votes to admit PR as a state but before the effective date of admission.
Facts on Puerto Rico statehood needed BEFORE, not after vote on H.R. 2499
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyfOyl5HetA&feature=player_embedded
Howard County stays in MD under my plan. If we gave Howard County (which is quite Democrat-leaning) to New Columbia then we might as well give them Baltimore city (and at least part of Baltimore County) as well, and if we took Baltimore away from MD then what’s left would not really be MD anymore.
Bump
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