History Learner
Well-known member
I do not think that is an accurate representation. When I do a Google search with the keywords "Republicans" and "statehood" and "Puerto Rico", the top recent hits relate to Republicans being reluctant.
The above article notes how a Republican representative from Alaska has broken from a Republican consensus critical of Puerto Rican statehood, arguing that there is no reason to assume it must be Democratic-leaning.
This article notes how Republicans generally, if not uniformly, base their opposition to Puerto Rican statehood on fears that the state will learn Democratic.
This article notes how, in a poll, Democratic respondents consistently were twice as likely as Republicans to favour statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington D.C.
Well, specific to what I was saying:
We support the right of the United States citizens of Puerto Rico to be admitted to the Union as a fully sovereign state. We further recognize the historic significance of the 2012 local referendum in which a 54 percent majority voted to end Puerto Rico’s current status as a U.S. territory, and 61 percent chose statehood over options for sovereign nationhood. We support the federally sponsored political status referendum authorized and funded by an Act of Congress in 2014 to ascertain the aspirations of the people of Puerto Rico. Once the 2012 local vote for statehood is ratified, Congress should approve an enabling act with terms for Puerto Rico’s future admission as the 51st state of the Union.
The Republican Party might say it favours Puerto Rican statehood, but in actual fact its membership has demonstrated itself very reluctant. The unspoken but real subtext, of the Republican Party being skeptical about admitting to the Union a populous island full of Hispanics who can be expected to be Democratic-leaning, is real.
I'd agree with this, but I think it's important to note the GOP of today is very different from the one of 20-40 years ago. In 2004, for example, their candidate would manage to win 44% of the Hispanic vote; concerns over the partisan leanings of Mexicans wouldn't be as extreme in the past as they are today. For further evidence of that, going back all the way to the Nixon years:
The United States of America is witnessing a growing Latin American voting demographic, and many might be surprised to learn that the first “Latino” President was, in fact, Richard Nixon. In 1969, his first year in office, he established the Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for Spanish Speaking People.
Throughout his Presidency, he appointed more Latinos than any preceding President, including John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. He remained unsurpassed in those numbers until Bill Clinton’s Presidency in the 1990’s.
Over four decades ago, Hispanics in the United States found themselves exercising more power in a Presidential campaign that at any other time in American history.
Seeking re-election, President Nixon reached out to the Latino community by discussing his strategy for funding education, health, small businesses and other programs in Latin American communities in areas like Texas, California, and in the Southwest. Some called it the Nixon Hispanic Strategy.
Nixon received 40 percent of the Latino vote, by most estimates, in the 1972 re-election.
Nixon was often joined in his campaign by some of his most prominent Latino appointees, including Cabinet Committee Chairman Henry Ramirez, U.S. Treasurer Ramona Banuelos, and Office of the Economic Opportunity head Phillip Sanchez.
The self-marginalization of California Republicans because of their perception as a political faction hostile to California's single largest population is ephemeral. California has stayed republican in format, for instance, has remained a polity with competitive democratic elections and referenda, has kept key institutions of governance and law since the state's foundation, and so on. Immigration has not changed that; California's institutions, if anything, have provided a matrix for immigrant integration.
I think you've confused me saying "character" as me saying "structure"; obviously California has kept all of that, but its character has certainly changed comparing, say, the 1950s to the 1980s or today for that matter. Most obviously, it went from a Republican leaning state to a firmly Democratic one.
The massive annexations of Mexican territory that you are talking about are wholly different. If Republicans are reluctant to bring into the Union a Puerto Rico already deeply integrated into the US, with millions of American citizens and a high-income economy, how much less likely will Republicans—even Democrats—be to bring into the US much poorer and more populous states with no history of deep integration?
For one, by taking into consideration these are not static parties forever set one way on an issue, that they are both malleable to sufficient public/private pressure and, finally, define deep integration?