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22 April 21
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FOCUS: Charles Pierce | The Real Republican Argument Against DC Having Senate Seats Is That They Can't Compete for Them
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "The administration again looked at its list of Sensible Policies to Make the Crazy People Crazier and checked off another box."
To do so, they would have to abandon all the cotton-candy illusions, and the angry, bigoted fictions, on which they’ve based their politics for four decades.
he administration again looked at its list of Sensible Policies to Make the Crazy People Crazier and checked off another box. From the Washington Post:
Noting Washington’s “robust economy, a rich culture, and a diverse population of Americans from all walks of life,” the administration said the proposed State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth would “make our Union stronger and more just… For far too long, the more than 700,000 people of Washington, D.C. have been deprived of full representation in the U.S. Congress,” the administration wrote. “This taxation without representation and denial of self-governance is an affront to the democratic values on which our Nation was founded.”
That DC statehood is only fair and just is beyond question at that point, and one of the ways you know that is by looking at the arguments mustered against it. You may recall a little while back at the end of March, at a House hearing on the topic, Republicans in Congress marshaled as evidence against the proposition this rather overly nuanced objection from Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia.
DC wants the benefits of a state without actually having to operate like one…DC would be the only state without an airport, without a car dealership, without a capital city, without a landfill.
(At the moment, Hice is an announced Republican candidate for Secretary of State in the next Georgia Republican primary, so we should all feel really good about that, right?)
The arguments have not become more refined in the ensuing months. For example, Rep. Nancy Mace held a press conference at which she said that D.C. wouldn’t even qualify to be a congressional district. More than one person noted that Mace said this while standing in front of Rep. Liz Cheney, who is the sole member of the House from Wyoming, which makes her the person who represents an entire state with fewer people than live in the District, and that has one more senator than it has representatives.
The fascinating element of this controversy for me always has been the sub rosa acknowledgement by the Republicans that two new Senate seats for the District are two new Senate seats that they cannot possibly win. And they know that to be true because they know in the darkest part of their political hearts that to compete for those two seats would obligate them to abandon all the cotton-candy illusions, and the angry, bigoted fictions, on which they’ve based their politics for four decades. They would have to cut white supremacy loose in all its forms. They would have to cease interpreting poverty as a moral failing. They would have to detach themselves from the crackpot notion of a tax-less economy. They see all that as political suicide. It’s easier not to confront it at all but, rather, to ignore the mirror that the District is, and what it shows them about themselves.
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