who blogs at Dirigo Blue and Kennebec Blues
and has been misrepresented by Senator Olympia Snowe for many years.
Rick Santorum took his campaign to Puerto Rico yesterday and in a move calculated to lose the upcoming Sunday caucuses went for broke, telling Puerto Ricans who have a November referendum scheduled on statehood and a Governor who supports both statehood and Mitt Romney that they should make English their official language as a statehood condition according to Reuters:
Santorum said he did not support a state in which English was not the primary language.
"Like any other state, there has to be compliance with this and any other federal law," Santorum said. "And that is that English has to be the principal language. There are other states with more than one language such as Hawaii but to be a state of the United States, English has to be the principal language."
Of course this ignores the fact that the United States does not have an official language and there are no "compliance" provisions for English. Some states in xenophobic zeal have passed laws making English an official language. Puerto Rico does already have English and Spanish as its official languages.
The thrust of Santorum's remarks would appear to be to play to his right wing base back on the mainland if this was a purposefully calculated move. However that is not Rick's usual English approach since he usually spouts off in English without much English forethought whatsoever. This is one more reason that in a Fox poll of potential Latino voters President Obama is at 69% and Rick Santorum is at 14% along with all his GOP rivals.
Currently 27 out of 50 states have passed laws making English the official language. In 1978 Native Hawaiian was added as the second official state language of Hawaii in addition to English:
"The Hawaiian language is the native language of Hawaii and may be used on all emblems and symbols representative of the State, its departments, agencies and political subdivisions."
One further wonders that since Santorum sees Puerto Rico's establishment of two official languages as a barrier to statehood, if in his rigid ideological approach to most things, that he believes Hawaii ought to be stripped of statehood. Doing so of course might play well to the GOP/tea base, killing three birds with one stone. It would finally make President Obama a foreigner, remove a reliable Democratic piece of the Electoral College, and increase the influence of the right wing English-only language purists.
Far fetched? So is Rick Santorum as President. Adiós Rick!