WISHING YOU SUCCESS WITH SECEDING

Just one week ago he was suggesting that Texas may have to consider seceding from the union, Governor Perry decided he would get one more bit of national help before doing so.

Today in a precautionary measure, he requested the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provide 37,430 courses of antiviral medications from the Strategic National Stockpile to Texas to prevent the spread of swine flu. Currently, three cases of swine flu have been confirmed in Texas.

As asinine as that sequence of events were, all you have to do is look at some numbers from a very recent daily KO's poll and it will be obvious why Texas Gov. Rick Perry is talking secession in the run up to what will be a tough primary battle against Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson.

Poll taken 4/20-22. of likely Texas voters.

Do you think Texas would be better off as an independent nation

or as part of the United States of America?
US: 61 Independent nation: 35
Democrats: US 82, Ind 15

Republicans: US 48, Ind 48

Independents: US 55, Ind 40
Do you approve or disapprove of Governor Rick Perry's suggestion that

Texas may need to leave the United States?
Approve: 37 Disapprove: 58
Democrats: Approve 16, Disapprove 80

Republicans: Approve 51, Disapprove 44

Independents: Approve 43, Disapprove 50

More Daily KO's: What if we let them go and become an independent nation?

Ft. Hood, and it's $6 billion impact in central Texas, would be an economic boon to Detroit or any number of other economically depressed American regions. What, do the secessionists think they could keep those American military bases on their newly sovereign soil?
How about the $2.5 billion that NASA pumps directly into salaries of employees and contractors in the Houston area, not to mention ancillary economic benefits and the prestige of having one of the premier space facilities in the world? The American patriots in New Mexico would be more than happy to take that off Texas' hands!

My solution? Nationalize the oil fields and let the rest go. I wasn't for building a border fence until Governor Perry hit my radar. Now, I say let em' go. It's not like they never split away from the union before; they did in February 1, 1861, and joined the Confederate States of America on March 2, 1861, and became a valuable confederate supply resource through the war, along with supplying over 70,000 men to serve in the confederate army.

The prevailing rationale was spelled out in the Texas Ordinance of Secession, a document ratified by the state's Secession Convention on February 1, by a vote of 166 to 8. The document specifies several reasons for secession, including its solidarity with its "sister slave-holding States," the Federal government's inability to prevent Indian attacks, slave-stealing raids, and other border-crossing acts of banditry. It accuses Northern politicians and abolitionists of a variety of outrages upon Texans. The bulk of the document offers a justification of slavery and white supremacy, including this extract:
"We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable."

Some would say there are still many Texans who never abandoned these opinions. Either way, if they did seceed, they could have a ready made executive branch with George Bush and Tom De Lay.