It’s not about gerrymandering state boundaries to give your party more power. You could just as easily split LA County in 3 states that all vote blue and have a bigger population than those rural areas listed above.

It’s about giving representation to US Citizens who are not represented. Why does a US citizen who lives in DC or Puerto Rico not have representation in the senate? If another district or territory the US that was conservative desired statehood (and wasn’t already represented), I would be all for it.

But then again, that’s maybe why I left the GOP about 10 years ago. Hypocrisy is not in my vocabulary.