Texas Governor Rick Perry must be regretting last April 15 when he decided to show up at a meeting in the state capital of Austin organized by secessionists who advocate Texas breaking away from the United States, and going back to being a separate nation as they were from 1836-1845.
Perry, who is seeking reelection as governor after the longest stint of any governor presently in office (ten years), made it seem that states rights and secession was acceptable language. In other words, the terms which remind one of South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun, the Civil War, Ross Barnett and Mississippi, George Wallace and Alabama, and the Ku Klux Klan, is acceptable doctrine in 2009.
A Civil War which killed 620,000 men supposedly settled the issue of states rights and secession–that it was illegal and would be met with force. Now just this past weekend, Perry was absent when these crazy secessionists met again in Austin and declared that bloodshed, violence, and war were likely to be necessary in order for Texas to break away for separate nationhood. They quoted Thomas Jefferson about the need to spill blood to cleanse a nation, taking the great Founding Father and President totally out of context, but does that really matter to dangerous crackpots who advocate the use of violence?
Even then Governor George W. Bush had the sense to use the state police force to crack down on a dangerous secessionist sect that advocated violence in the mid 1990s, but apparently Rick Perry, though absent this time, seems not to feel that he can or should oppose such a radical sect of nuts.
It will be interesting to see if Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who crazily has decided to take on the burdens of the poorly run state of Texas by running for Governor in the primary against Governor Perry, will be able to use this issue against Perry and win the nomination and probable victory in November 2010, and hopefully restore sanity to Texas state government. We can wish her good luck, as it would be a break for Texas!
While there are those who will argue that Texas maintains a right to secede from the United States is legal, it is absolutely FALSE! The Supreme Court ruled 140 years ago that Texas’ secession was illegal. And for those who would suggest that a joint resolution was not a valid means of annexation, all parties at the time who took part in the process approved of the measures which led to statehood. Thus, it is not a debatable subject- there is zero possibility of Texas secession. For Rick Perry to give any legitimacy to these groups is crazy, and it betrays his lack of political tact, as well as his overall lack of Constitutional knowledge, and Texas history. Kay Bailey Hutchison is extremely popular, and will make the primary race quite difficult for Perry. Time will tell though if it is challenging enough that he will have to appeal to these fringe groups to garner sufficient support to move on to re-election (heaven forbid!). As for the secessionists, you can leave the country, but you cannot take the land within the United States with you. And if you do leave, good riddance.