The Washington Post is doing an admirable job of cheerleading for the next unicorn that congressional Democrats are set to pursue, that being DC statehood. The obvious nature of the power grab that the Democrats are trying to pull off doesn’t seem to sway their media enablers in the slightest. Nor do the historical reasons as to why the District of Columbia wasn’t created as a state to begin with. All that really matters is the opportunity to summon up two more senators from a reliably blue neighborhood, that is smaller in both physical size and population than your average county. The job for the GOP at this moment, as Yahoo News reports, is to educate the public about what the Democrats are trying to do and why this scheme shouldn’t be allowed to come to pass.

The campaign for Washington, D.C., to become the 51st state has been gaining momentum in the Democratic Party, The Washington Post reports. Several Democratic lawmakers, like Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), said the urgency stems both from a “powerful democratic imperative for getting everybody equal political rights and representation” and also the sense that “the Senate has become the principal obstacle to social progress across a whole range of issues.” In other words, two more senators from the heavily blue capital city would diminish the skew toward lower-population, Republican-leaning states in the chamber.

But as the idea becomes more and more of a priority for Democrats, it’s also glaring brighter on the Republican Party’s radar. “Our base is concerned,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the top Republican on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, told the Post. “This is the first step of their political power grab. And we’re going to make sure that America knows what they’re trying to do and why it wasn’t created as a state to begin with.”

In order to try to concoct a more persuasive argument, our media mavens called upon… another liberal reporter. This time it was CBS analyst Wesley Lowery.

https://twitter.com/WesleyLowery/status/1373356253938913281

Ah, yes. The old “taxation without representation” argument. What Lowery and his comrades fail to note is that nobody is forcing anyone to live in DC. It’s not exactly a challenge to commute to work inside the District, particularly when we’re talking about an area that’s literally not much bigger than some shopping malls.

As I mentioned above, voters need to be reminded of the reasons that the District of Columbia wasn’t created as the state of Columbia. One good reason is found in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution. “The Congress shall have Power To …exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States.” If you need a deeper dive than that, go back and read Federalist 43, where James Madison explains at length how the federal capital can’t be placed under the control and tyranny of a single state.

The latest push for statehood tries to weasel its way around those issues by proposing that the two-mile by two-mile section of the district where most of the government buildings are found be split off and remain the capital, while the remaining sliver of land is converted to the 51st state. Of course, the District is already only 68 square miles as it is. The new “state” would be even more minuscule. For Pete’s sake, even Rhode Island covers more than 1,500 square miles of land area.

If your real concern is the representation of the people currently living in the District, there’s a much easier solution available. Just give the land back to the states that ceded it originally. The Constitution doesn’t set a minimum size for the capital, just a maximum. We could shrink it if we wanted, and it would be a much less constitutionally problematic remedy to the representation issue. But a common-sense solution like that isn’t of interest to the Democrats because this scheme has nothing to do with ensuring the congressional representation of the residents of the District.

Also, not that it matters much to the Democratic leadership that’s only concerned with the acquisition of power and pleasing the far-left socialists, but this scheme is a total loser with the voters. The latest polling on the issue of DC statehood found that only 29% of respondents supported the idea. 16% weren’t sure and a majority of 55% were firmly opposed. Some other polls that were worded more favorably for Democrats have shown larger levels of support, but the best they manage is a slim plurality. This is not an idea supported by the majority of the country. This plot isn’t quite as unpopular as the provisions of HR1 that would curtail voter ID laws and encourage the mass mailing of paper ballots for elections, but it’s obviously not a winner, either.

It’s looking more and more as if the Democrats have given up on holding on to power for more than two years and they will seek to ram through as much of their agenda as possible, no matter how much it ticks off the electorate. Let’s see how that works out for them next November. If they wind up losing control of the Senate after trying to jam all of this malarkey down the throat of the country, it will be absolutely hilarious if they kill off the filibuster before losing control.