Santorum tells Puerto Rico to start speaking English
Campaigning in Puerto Rico, Rick Santorum doesn’t show any signs that he wants to pander Wednesday, telling voters (erroneously) that they must declare English their only official language to achieve statehood.
You’d think Santorum would want to butter up Puerto Ricans a bit more deftly, given the fact that Mitt Romney’s victories in American Samoa and Hawaii last night actually won him more delegates than Santorum grabbed with his Alabama and Mississippi wins. Yet according to Reuters, Santorum told El Vocero, a local newspaper, “Like any other state, there has to be compliance with this and any other federal law … 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.”
I predict that even if Puerto Rico votes for statehood, it would be a very difficult sell to the GOP due to its current xenophobia, even though the pro-statehood governor supports the GOP. If Puerto Rico votes for statehood, expect an explosion of anti-Hispanic hatred in the wingularity.