From a pragmatic standpoint, Republicans generally oppose D.C. statehood because it would almost certainly result in two Democratic senators and some Democratic House members. Democrats generally support statehood for this reason. Whatever objections the Republicans raise against D.C. statehood must be considered in the context of 1889 and 1890. During this time, the Republican party adopted a pro big business stance that cost them the popular majority. In response, they used their control of Congress to add six new states—a strategy that has paid off to this day. Modern Republicans can say that they were not involved in that process; they merely continue to benefit from it. They could even condemn the political strategy used back then, since doing so involves no risk and no cost. But should D.C. become a state?

One of the main tactics used by Republicans to argue against D.C. statehood is claiming that the Democrats have bad motives: they want to use any political advantage to bring about their “socialist utopia.” On the one hand, this can be seen as a Wicked Motivation fallacy. This is a type of ad hominem (or genetic fallacy) in which a claim is rejected because the person or group making the claim is alleged to have a wicked motive. The form looks like this:

Premise 1: Person or Group A makes claim C.

Premise 2: A has wicked motives.

Conclusion: C is false.

This is a fallacy because motivations do not prove or disprove a claim. It is reasonable to consider motives when assessing credibility or morality, but that is distinct from determining whether a claim is true. For example, this is clearly bad logic:

Premise 1: Bill says that police should not murder citizens.

Premise 2: But Bill hates the police and just wants to signal his virtues to the other libs.

Conclusion: Police should murder citizens.

In the case of D.C. statehood, the wicked motives fallacy would look like this:

Premise 1: The Democrats claim D.C. should be a state.

Premise 2: The Democrats just want power so they can jam their socialist utopia down the throat of America.

Conclusion: D.C. should not be a state.

To be fair to the Republicans, they can make their case as a utilitarian moral argument. The gist is that D.C. should not be a state because if it were a state, then the Democrats would be able to advance their polices and (Republicans claim) these policies would do more harm than good (for those who matter). The Democrats’ likely counter would be that their policies would do more good than harm (for those who matter). Interestingly, both parties can be right. The Democrats’ policies might be less beneficial to those who matter to the Republicans while being more beneficial to those who matter to the Democrats. Those siding with the Republicans will find their moral case appealing: the Democrats would likely help the less well-off (and themselves) more than the Republicans would and this would be wrong (from the Republican perspective). Laying aside the utilitarian arguments, there is the question of whether D.C. qualifies as a state. The easy answer is it does. The traditional requirements of statehood (established in 1953) are:

• The inhabitants of the proposed new state are imbued with and are sympathetic toward the principles of democracy as exemplified in the American Constitution.
• A majority of the electorate wish statehood.
• The proposed new state has sufficient population and resources to support state government and carry its share of the cost of Federal Government

These conditions have all been met. While some claim that D.C.’s population is too low to be a state, it has a population of 692,683 while Wyoming only has a population of 578,759. As such, if Wyoming has enough people to be a state, then so does D.C. Republicans could advance the argument that the people of D.C. fail to meet the first condition using the classic method of lying.  But should Republicans oppose statehood?

From a selfish and pragmatic standpoint, the Republicans should oppose D.C. statehood: they are a (numerical) minority party and hold office disproportionately to the number of people they represent. This is enabled by a diverse set of political strategies ranging from gerrymandering to voter suppression. This approach explicitly rejects the notion of majority rule and the idea that political legitimacy rests on the consent of the governed. That is, this rejects democracy. But what if you accept majority rule and the idea that legitimacy depends on consent?

As it now stands, the people of D.C. are not represented in Congress and are not able to provide their consent (via representative). D.C. does get electoral college votes, despite not being a state, but this system has its own anti-democratic and anti-majority rule issues. Since I consistently hold to the foundational principles of representative democracy, I believe that D.C. should be a state: it meets the requirements and to deny its citizens representation is undemocratic. Or perhaps “unrepresentative” is a better term.

It could be countered that the citizens of D.C. choose to live there and thus voluntarily forgo representation; but one could have made that argument for any state before it became a state: people elected to live in parts of the country that were not (yet) states. So, if this argument were good, then it would apply to all the (non-original) states. But this is absurd.

At this point, an obvious attack against me is to point out that I tend to favor the Democrats over the Republicans and hence I am also operating based on wicked motives. That is, I just want the Democrats to win, and I would have a different position if the Republicans wanted to make part of Florida or Texas into a new state.

My reply is that my motives are irrelevant to the truth of my claims and the quality of my logic. Also, if the Republican proposed states met the conditions that qualify D.C. for statehood, then I would be consistent: they should also become states. This could, of course, lead to an absurd situation in which the political parties start carving up existing states to gain more senate seats and electoral college votes. The difference between creating a state out of a non-state and carving up existing states could be relevant to the argument, so a principled case could be made both for supporting D.C. as a state and rejecting carving up existing states to gain senate seats. That said, a case could be made for splitting up large population states to give the people slightly more proportional representation. For example, the tiny population of Wyoming gets the same number of senators as the hugely populated states of California, Texas and Florida. But that is a matter for another time.

In closing, D.C. does meet the requirements for statehood and its citizens are morally entitled to due representation in congress. As such, D.C. should be a state. The same reasoning applies to Puerto Rico, provided the citizens want it to become a state. And yes, I would have to accept North and South Texas, East and West Florida and so on if the Republicans wanted to start breaking up states in accord with the requirements of statehood.