GOPols on Puerto Rico

Personally, I do believe the day will come when Puerto Rico will become another state in the United States.

The flag, as envisioned by statehood backers



So the fact that Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney made comments on Friday while campaigning in Florida that some people seem determined to interpret as support for statehood strikes me as officials saying the incredibly obvious without offending those people who have a hang-up about this issue.

I REALLY DON’T think that either official, especially Romney, said anything terribly new. Yet it is the drawback of covering campaign activity that there are times when things get blown out of proportion to their true significance because space (and airtime) needs to be filled.

For the record, both campaigned at the Hispanic Leadership Network, where they were asked about the issue. Gingrich said he thinks Puerto Rico residents should decide the issue by referendum, and is prepared to respect whatever view they support.

“I am not dictating the outcome of the referendum,” he said. Which makes his rhetoric the typical political response – take no stance, and hope that confusion and chaos among Puerto Ricans prevents them from ever coming to a consensus on the issue.

Romney took a similar stance, only adding that he expects Puerto Ricans to support statehood in a referendum that will be part of their November general elections. “I expect the people of Puerto Rico will decide that they want to become a state and I can tell you that I will work with (Gov. Luis Fortuno) to make sure that if that vote comes out in favor of statehood that we will go through the process in Washington to provide statehood to Puerto Rico.”

DUH!

If the people of Puerto Rico do decide in favor of wanting to be a state (instead of a commonwealth with lesser rights, even though all their residents are U.S. citizens by birth), Romney (or any politician) would be hard-pressed to stand in the way of Congress going through the process that results in a place becoming a state.

Which isn’t exactly an overnight process either. It will take time.

If anything, I would have thought it a more newsworthy answer if Romney had said something in opposition to statehood for Puerto Rico. Because I suspect that would have gained him more political support from the ideologues than he will get from Puerto Rican voters living in Florida who go to the polls on Tuesday.

THIS IS ONE of those issues that gains little traction among Latinos as a whole. The bulk of us whose ethnic origins don’t include Puerto Rico don’t get all excited about this one.

And even many Puerto Ricans don’t put it at the top of the priority list – particularly if they are not among the 4 million who live on the island.

Why should someone who has already left the island care about the fact that their ethnic brethren don’t get all the benefits of their U.S. citizenship, when all they’d have to do to get it is make the same move to the mainland that many Puerto Ricans have made?

If anything, my only interest in the issue is because of the fact that I see how much it outrages some ideologues to think that Puerto Rico might someday be the equivalent of Hawaii. The idea of a state where Spanish is the indigenous language  most commonly used does bother those people.

SO PERHAPS IT would be a good thing for a state of Puerto Rico; although I realize it is a tad juvenile to support something just because it offends somebody else.

But at a time when our nation is so rapidly becoming significantly Latino in composition, perhaps the time has come to quit thinking of Puerto Rico solely as the spoils the U.S. got from Spain after “winning” that war in 1898.

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