Doesn't it stand to reason then that these people cannot be called Republicans if they want to dissolve the Republic?

Just call them for what they are, Confederates, and be done with it. Words do mean things, you know.

Thankfully they are in the clear minority - they just seem important because they have a mouthpiece in Fox News.

Instead of picking on Texas, even though Texas richly deserves it, why doesn't some enterprising news organization ask the same question of all the red states? I "betcha" you'd see a similar Republican break-out in most of them.

They have no state income tax!! How will they support their new republic? I suppose all those government programs won't seem so bad to the Texas GOP then, eh?

I think we should EJECT Texas from the Union and also eliminate all Defense Appropriations and support of any public spending (e.g. highways, agricultural, etc) in the Flake State of Texas.

Us folks up here in the upper Midwest have been getting screwed since the early 1980s as the bulk of our Federal Tax dollars to the red states in the deep south.

Texas corporations, defense contractors, and agricultural interests make them a welfare state anyway...

I think Texas seceding is a great idea. I heartily endorse it and highly recommend it.

To move this along a little faster maybe we offer them some sort of severance package -- like 2-months of additional Federal aid.

I think we'll need a border fence after they leave so they won't jump the border and downgrade our schools and take our jobs, though. Perhaps we can hire Texans to build it.

Can we keep Austin?

Dare we hope that they'll actually do it?

After giving Bush to the country, we Texans should just be grateful that we aren't being kicked out of the union. What arrogance!

Ask that question when Bush or a Repub is in the WH and you'll get a different response.

We can just move TX in & out of the Union depending upon the party affiliation of the POTUS.

Austin could be partitioned, like Berlin or Jerusalem. Hope we get to keep everything north of the river, at least.

In other news, the MT House just voted on a "sovereignty" resolution that sounds quite a bit like Perry's speech. It failed on a tie vote, 50 Repubs for, 50 Dems against.

The MOVEMENT BURGEONS!!!

SECESSION NOW!

Perry's solidified his position and is now looking GOOD for another term!

The Nation of Texas!! http://www.nationoftexas.com/docs/image213.gif

Look I realize Texas deserves it's fair share of criticism but just look at the gains Texas Dem's made in the state legislator. We also made Cornyn put more effort into holding his office than before. I am from Texas and as I have said in here before have been actively working hard to influence those around me to open their eyes to the failure of the GOP to make effective policies for Texas and its residents. Look at where Texas ranks nationally in at this document .

See we have some sane heads down here and we really need everyone to stay committed to the US Constitution and our Bill of Rights. Keep up the good fight.

And call Rep Joe Barton, who prematurely stated via twitter that he had stumped Dr. Chu during testimony yesterday. He has a Master's degree in Science from Purdue yet seems to not understand how Oil made in the ground in Alaska or Texas for that matter. Please call him and take back our country through civil and civic means:
(202) 225-2002 Washington office

There is still hope down here in TX.

I, for one, would like to thank Texas Republicans: this thread was one of the most enjoyable to read in a quite a long time.

And more seriously, any person who hears this (outside of Texas, of course) is just going to say, WFT?????? It makes Republicans look even goofier.

Awesome.

As a longtime football fan, can we FINALLY now stop referring to the Dallas Cowboys as America's team?

How are they going to pay for the fence around their border?

so if texas secedes and I am stuck in texas with these idiots can i secede from texas? I know thousands of people would agree with me and leave texas and rejoin the US. Oh..but wait we would be called unpatriotic for wanting to leave a country that wanted to leave the US. I forgot the people we are talking about are hypocrites.

These are the people who constantly say it's okay to torture because we lost three thousand people on 9/11. We lost ten million people because the south wanted to secede.

Though, a war to preserve the union would be a much better cause than fighting in Iraq, I might enlist if they take this secession talk any further. What does it take to charge someone with treason/insurrection/incitement? And what are they really fighting for? At least the south pre-civil war wanted to preserve the institution of slavery. These guys want to... not think so far as the end of a paragraph?

Fuck Texas.

You really don't what the good people here in Texas to move out. Instead you want other good people to move in and speed the transformation of the rural old-South culture of Texas to a new, more modern culture like that of California. It's already going that direction. Speed up the process.

I have been a Texan since 1944 and I am now retired and own property here in Fort Worth, the largest city that voted Republican in Texas during the election of 2008.

Most of my life this state has been largely rural with agriculture as the primary industry. The culture has been old-South agricultural with and overlay of wildcat oil production and, since WW II, military. Oil and oil production has been isolated to a few specific areas, although it spread the money around pretty well. It was a Southern state, colonized largely by Southerners who brought the slave system that made wealthy men of plantation owners; a fact that was very important is getting Texans to revolt against Mexico which had outlawed slavery. Like all Southern states, it was socially and politically dominated by those few wealthy slave-owning plantation owners who had to maintain slavery because they could not pay enough to hire farm labor and still remain wealthy.

The entire Southern culture including that of Texas was skewed to justify slavery and the brutality that slavery required because no intelligent human being works without getting any reward from it. That's particularly true of the kind of stoop work cotton farming required. Only the threat of punishment, torture and death was adequate to keep the enslaved population working, and that only worked by demonizing and segregating people with dark skin. The dark skin and African features made every person of African descent obviously a slave, and the culture was designed to dehumanize those people. It was made easier by isolating those African-descent individuals on plantations away from towns. Even the Churches were enlisted in this demonization of individuals of African descent (something that had not happened much prior to about 1830 or 1840 even in the old South.)

Cotton was the single largest commodity in international trade for most of the 19th century, much the equivalent of oil today. Like Oil in the twentieth century, that international trade created extremely wealthy individuals and families. Most of the wealthy individuals in the US prior to the Civil War were in the plantation south. But since cotton was not automated, it required slavery to create the wealth those individuals and families enjoyed. So they created the culture that supported slavery and imported the people whose physical characteristics would distinguish them. All it took was demonizing those characteristics, something that was required for the people who had to brutalize them.

Because the Northerners did not want to battle the Southern culture after the Civil War and because President Andrew Johnson was a Southerner, Johnson ended Reconstruction before it had taken much effect. The culture has lasted to this very day. It includes almost all of the idiocy that we see in the conservative Republicans. But that culture is clearly declining, and the extremism we are watching today is the death rattle of that culture. They know they have everything going against them, and will not go quietly.

Texas is still an oligarchy of this type being controlled by a few wealthy families, with independent oil-producers having joined the oligarchs in the 20's and 30's after Spindletop was discovered in 1901. But this is changing at last as Texas becomes a metropolitan state rather than an agricultural one. That's why all the large cities with the exception of Fort Worth voted Democratic in 2008.

The wealthy oligarchs and the largest churches here have done much as the Republicans are doing now. They are fighting a rear-guard action against the on-coming and inevitable urbanization of Texas. But they are fighting like trapped rats. They fight dirty and at every opportunity. That's what conservatism means - to refuse to let go of the old ways even when they are overtaken by event.

For every one of us who can't stand this old culture to move out will leave the desperate rats to attempt to spread their poison everywhere outside of Texas. You really don't want that. Instead, encourage urbanites with good sense to move to Texas and speed up the transformation. Our current relatively favorable employment and low housing cost situation should make that easier.

[This is my own interpretation of the history, of course, but I have a lot of documentation to support it. I don't expect it to be popular with either the oligarchs or the leaders of the mega-churches.]

My answer to Rick Perry's secession remarks?

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!

Somebody please give me one example of anything good that has ever come out of that shithole ...

Good riddance to bad rubbish!

To everyone who says Texas should leave:

No.

The good citizens of Texas are protected under the Constitution, citizens of the United States of America just like the rest of us.

We will not abandon them to the likes of a Republican party which wants to divide this Union. Abraham Lincoln must be spinning in his grave.

We will not allow these demagogues to break what so many gave their lives to preserve. They dishonor the memory of our soldiers, not only in the Civil War, but those who fought in all other wars to secure this nation.

That's my story - and I'm sticking to it.

Aw, shucks. Let 'em go, and let them deal with the borders and the gun running and the drugs. I give them twenty months until Mexico is able to walk in and claim its lost territory.

Fine. Let Texas secede. But: They don't get any Social Security checks for the old folks (heck, they're so pure and noble, they can take care of the seniors themselves, just like the Amish do now) any other benny us citizens get, they DON'T get. Plus, they can take care of all the illegal aliens...we'll send 'em right down there, and they can feed them, supply welfare, and health care. They better have their very own gun factories, though, because we sure won't ship them any. They'll just have to make do with what they already have.

Bye-bye, now. Don't bother writing.

At time like this I truly miss Molly Ivins!