Rep. Nancy Mace: Supporting DC statehood is 'ideological terrorism'

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) is up in arms that Democrats are looking to grant more than 700,000 people living in the District of Columbia voting representation in Congress, saying that doing so amounts to “ideological terrorism.”

“This is nothing but a naked power play today,” Mace said of the D.C. statehood bill. “That’s all this is about. People who can’t get their radical agenda passed under this system our framers set up now want to blow it up. They’re nothing — this is nothing but ideological terrorism by those willing to completely ignore the Constitution and system of government.”

It’s Mace’s latest argument against statehood, which passed the House on Thursday by a vote of 216-208, with every Democratic lawmaker voting in favor and every Republican voting against.

Mace said on Tuesday that D.C. shouldn’t be a state because it didn’t have enough people living in it.

But D.C.’s population is larger than two states — Vermont and Wyoming — and is larger than 77 congressional districts across the country, according to CNN.

Republicans have made other baseless arguments against statehood, including that it doesn’t have mining or manufacturing, that it’s not geographically large enough, and that it doesn’t have a landfill or airport.

However, it seems the real reason Republican don’t want D.C. to be a state is closer to what Mace said in her speech on the House floor on Thursday: Democrats would almost certainly gain another voting member of the House, and two United States senators if the District of Columbia was a state.

“This is not about a balance of power. This is about more power,” Mace said, adding that D.C. would get “two more far-left senators.”

Other GOP lawmakers — such as Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) — have admitted they don’t want D.C. to be a state for similar reasons in previous hearings on the statehood bill.

It led Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY) to accuse Republicans of racism.

“The truth is, there is no good faith argument for disenfranchising over 700,000 people, most of whom are people of color. These desperate objections are about fear. Fear that in D.C. their white supremacist politics will no longer play,” Jones said in a fiery speech on the House floor on Thursday.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.