Senator Mike Rounds’s latest fundraising e-mail, seeking contributions to the “Senate Georgia Battleground Fund,” shows the bullet points the National Republican Senate Committee apparently finds make the donor focus groups twitch with terror:
National Democrats want to defund police, open our borders, raise taxes, make DC a state, and take away our freedom. The Senate is our Firewall to stop their agenda and we cannot afford to lose it [Rounds for Senate, fundraising e-mail, 2020.11.19].
Defund the police, open borders, raise taxes—yeah, we expect that in a Rounds/Republican pitch. But DC statehood is rising to the top of the arguments now? That’s an interesting expression of the Republican drive to apartheid!
Rounds’s focus on DC statehood as a threat to democracy (remember, in Trumpistan, more Americans participating and enjoying representation in the political system is a bad thing) is not a new GOP phenomenon. Republicans were using anti-DC-statehood taglines (not arguments, just dog-whistles) in campaign appeals before the general election. Republicans clearly see America shifting away from their Trumpist, white-supremacist agenda and are desperate to continue rigging the electoral map to thwart the will of the people. Keeping the District of Columbia, which is 46% white, 46% black, and 92% Biden) from electing two Senators to represent their interests is part of that anti-democratic agenda. Last month, House Republicans introduced three bills seeking to block D.C. statehood by either retroceding the District to Maryland or by rewriting the Constitution to prohibit any future states from having Senate representation:
The two bills for retrocession to Maryland have no support from either the District or Maryland. In fact, a huge majority of D.C. residents, 86%, voted for statehood in a 2016 referendum. Retrocession would be inconsistent with that referendum vote and the District’s current pursuit of self-determination. The retrocession bills concede that the geographical size of the federal district can be reduced, as our statehood bill would do.
Moreover, Maryland residents, who have only one large city, Baltimore, have never indicated or voted to add another, the District of Columbia. In fact, Maryland’s most senior Member, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, is not only a cosponsor of our D.C. statehood bill, he wrote a Washington Post op-ed piece strongly promoting D.C. statehood.
The third bill, a constitutional amendment, purports to limit the composition of the Senate to senators who are from states admitted to the Union prior to the current Congress. This far-fetched attempt to keep D.C. from becoming the 51st state has not even drawn Republican support. It is even more unlikely to succeed because the constitutional amendment concedes that D.C. statehood is constitutional and that only a constitutional amendment can block it [Rep. Eleanor Norton Holmes, press release, 2020.10.14].
The Washington Post editorial board notes that the residents of D.C. deserve statehood, but Republicans, as demonstrated by their efforts to sabotage voting and overturn the results of a fair and secure Presidential election, choose power over people and principle:
U.S. citizens — no matter their party affiliation — deserve to be fully represented in Congress. The population of D.C. is larger than that of Wyoming or Vermont, D.C. residents pay more in federal taxes than those living in 22 states, and Washingtonians live up to all their responsibilities as citizens, including going to war to serve their country. Yet they are denied a voice in Congress.
Republicans know that is just plain wrong. But just as they have sought to hold onto their power by systematically making it harder for people to vote, so are they willing to play politics with the civil rights of the U.S. citizens who live in D.C. [Washington Post editorial board, “Republicans Know D.C. Deserves to Be a State, But Their Own Power Takes Precedence,” via Hagerstown Regional Airport Information, 2020.11.15].
Republican understand they can’t win in an America that gives every American an equal vote and equal representation in Congress. Rounds’s fundraising flagging of D.C. statehood as a primary threat to the “Our Voice. Our Values” in his e-mail banner is one more expression of that loathing of We the People and a truly inclusive and more Perfect Union.
By the way, the fine print on the WinRed fundraising website to which Rounds’s e-mail links says that individuals can give the Senate Georgia Battleground Fund up to $254,100. They promise the first $5,600 will be split equally between the campaign funds of Senators Kelly Loeffler (who faces ethics complaints for soliciting campaign contributions in the U.S. Capitol) and David Perdue (that’s Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue’s cousin). Contributions above $5,600 will go to the NRSC, its legal fund, and its headquarters account.
Rounds is correct, Democrats want to take away your freedom to infect others, how pernicious of them.
If states like Wyoming with a smaller population than Washington DC, along with states like South Dakota and North Dakota that aren’t much bigger and actually smaller than most of the other fifty states, each deserve two Senators then an argument that DC is too small to justify two Senators literally makes no sense.
Rounds’ claim that adding DC is somehow “a threat to democracy” is stupid considering the position of Trumpists like Rounds that the electoral votes of states of similar size and even smaller populations apparently has not threatened democracy. Indeed, isn’t the popular vote deemed insufficient for Republicans when a Democrat wins it precisely because the US is a “republic” rather than a democracy?
Pick a lane!
I believe Dakota Territory was divided into North and South Dakota for the mere purpose of having four republican senators at the time instead of two.Maybe reverse back to Dakota Territory and give DC statehood thus staying at 50 states. Possibly, merging the two states, SD politicians would be less corrupt.
You will never get anything from Rounds except GOP talking points. I have tried several times. He’s just a tool… but he’s our tool for 6 more years. Thanks, SD! !@#%^&*
The GOP Republican party is becoming a party bent on self-preservation instead of a political party
with intent to serving the nation at large. Proof is in the reaction to the most closely supervised election in our history and the GOP legal charges being dropped like winter flies because there is no ‘there’ there. Rudy’s appearance last week at a lawn care business flanked by a porn shop and crematorium followed by yesterday’s Halloween caricature says it all. Those who believed in conservative, Republican ideals of 2 or 3 decades past are gone now. Until wise-thinking members of the GOP break ranks and give the middle finger to these clowns like Trump and his minions, it will only delay the inevitable.
The rights wingnuts swear they want to protect never seem to include women of child bearing age
and they want to give fetuses all applicable rights up to the moment of birth, then the newly emancipated parasite is on its own.
You have to have values, for them to be threatened, Marion is a cowardly punk who puts party over all else and is complicit in trumpolini’s treasonous attack on our democracy.
Can anybody tell Me what Mike Rounds will get from the taxpayers in retirement and Thune will make thank you.Would be a great letter to the editor.
It is silly that a small population of people would get to send two senators and a representative to influence the laws of the nation.
I believe there was an auto-correct/typo in Sen. Round’s remarks: this would be a threat FROM democracy — not to democracy. The GOP has invested so much in entrenching its minority rule, that it believes itself immune from silly ideas like democracy and popular votes.
The democrats HAVE to win the senate. Then usher in statehood for DC, PR, Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa — to end the perversion of minority rule in the US. Corporate democrats blew this for generations. When the minority rules – then the US has governmental legitimacy problem. The intelligent gene pool largely left the Louisiana Purchase lands. The remaining residents of those lands need to get over it. Land doesn’t vote. People do. And the majority of the American people live in urban settings. Get over it. Move on.
The great quandary of acting nobly when facing an adversary with no moral compass or sense of justice is the temptation to sink to the level of your opponent.
Why do we need a Senate? It’s become a totally useless institution. It used to be a great place to debate and do nothing. Now they don’t bother to debate. It costs too much money for the benefit we get out of it. Abolish the Senate. Get rid of the Electoral College. And admit DC and Puerto Rico as states.
We need the senate because it an important element of the governmental system. The fact that system has been gamed by a greaser grifter from Brooklyn, under other circumstances the senate would be proactive and do their and do their duty. no balls!
The Dick has inserted itself into the Cheney Girl and we would be expected to suck up the feigned concern for the party and the hundreds of thousands of dead people of color and all
of those, within the group of people are too poor to live. Thank don and dick for a great new merica.
If you compare the similarities of the Nazi party with the Fascists’ and the current and the so-called democracy we are forced live with.
If you compare the similarities of the Nazi party with the Fascists’ and the current and the so-called democracy we are forced live with. Go figure.
Donald Pay— Senegal abolished their Senate in 2012! I agree. Abolish the Senate. It’s welfare for the small states. Abolish the electoral college. That’s welfare the minority conservatives. Add DC, Puerto Rico and other territories too. Does SD Democratic Party have that in its platform? Or is just a blue dog conservative Party? A blue Democratic Party could be on record to abolish the 2 welfare’s for Trumpists – the Senate and Electoral College.
I can see Senegalese democracy overtaking Budweiser beer belly democracy in South Dakota. Nebraska abolished their house, in order to have Unicameral Senate.
Quadruple welfare for Senate Republicans. Free healthcare paid for by the taxpayers, while many taxpayers pay $2000 a month in premiums or can’t afford health care. Free pension when Roundsy and Thuney retire, while many many people get no pension after years of work, and maybe something in IRA. The Senate itself is a welfare device for small states. The electoral college is welfare, too. Abolish the Senate, electoral college, add DC and Puerto Rico as states. One way to get rid of racism is to abolish the Senate.
Why can’t South Dakota have a statesman, if we have to have republican senators and a representative? Why can’t South Dakota have a principled statesman to represent us instead of a pack of yes-boys like thune, rounds, johnson? Senator Mitt Romney, Senator Pat Toomey are the few senators standing up and calling out trump’s shenanigans and fact-free lawsuits.
Imagine how the sore loser republicans would have screamed their heads off if in 2016, Clinton and the democrats, who won by 2 million votes, tried subverting the undemocratic electoral college. Now the Biden won by over 6 million votes and won the electoral college it was time last week for any remaining republican statesmen to show character, values, and grace. Alas, we have none among the South Dakota yes-boys of thune, rounds, and johnson.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-far-republican-presidents-have-fallen/2020/11/20/daee4410-2ab1-11eb-8fa2-06e7cbb145c0_story.html
Richard Wolffe lays out the dangerous trump subversion in his post election attacks on our democracy and his yes-boys going along.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/21/all-the-ways-trump-tried-subvert-election
Mr. H says:
grudznick says:
More Republican Senators now have COVID than have recognized Biden’s election win.
iowans have beau coup hog cafos. South Dakota has a Grudzilla. Iowa had first choice.
C’mon Grudz- was it a rigged election when McGovern, Daschle and Tim Johnson won South Dakota handily? Or, is it only when the GOP whines when they lose that elections are rigged. Hard to figure, eh?!
No, Mr. Jake, Messrs. Daschle and Johnson won fair and square. Although he also won, Mr. McGovern, however, used witchcraft. It is widely known McGovern was a witch.