Over the last 13 years, my children and I have, one-by-one and due to forces more or less beyond our control, moved to the Deep South.
It didn’t take long for the family motto to become “Lincoln was wrong.”
So when Texas governor Rick Perry started invoking the glories of the Sovereign State of Texas, and making what he apparently thought were threats to secede we giggled and emailed each other smiley faces.
Perry, however, apparently expected a nationwide gasp of horror.
What he got was gales of laughter.
Hey Rick, didn’t you know that just about everybody who doesn’t live there hates Texas? It is particularly galling to have you whining about how Texans should be left alone to run Texas a mere three months after we finally put a stop to you all running the whole damn country.
Perry’s rant was pretty unfocused, but Tom Delay defended him on Chris Matthews’s Hardball later that week saying that Texans were fed up being a donor state – a state that pays more in federal taxes than it gets back in federal spending. Texas is a donor state - by six cents. According to the Tax Foundation, the government spends .94 cents on Texas for every $1 Texas sends to Washington. Oh, the poor exploited darlings!
Perry, in several speeches at a Tea Party and elsewhere didn’t exactly threaten secession, the courts have ruled that no state has the right to do that. But he claimed that Texas, under the treaty that brought it into the union, retained the right to split into six states, thus allowing the state the equivalent of 10 more senators. The federal government, Perry said, would kick Texas out before it would allow it that much power.
As scary as it is to think of having ten Kay Bailey Hutchison or John Cornyn clones, I doubt that Congress would have the balls to kick out one Texas let alone six.
But imagine if they did. We would not have to pay the National Park Service to run the George W. Bush Memorial to Incompetence if 43 is able to raise enough money to actually build his presidential library. We would also lose the expense of running two other edifices dedicated to failed Texas Commanders-in-Chief. It is unanimous, there is no other kind. (Actually, Eisenhower was born in Texas, but he only admitted it under duress.)
As cute and devious as he is, we could tell T. Boone Picket to get lost. If he wants to sell us his wind power he can build his own grid and deliver the electricity to our doorstep like all the American power companies do.
We wouldn’t have to fear the return of Tom Delay to Congress. He has established a new base outside of Texas, but you can bet no other state is dumb enough to elect him anything.
We could have beans in our chili and eat Memphis barbeque without ridicule.
Wearing cowboy boots with a business suit would get the attention it deserves, loud titters!
Americans (that would be The Rest of Us) would no longer have to guard the Texas part of the Mexican border although we would have to protect the longer Republic of Texas/U.S. border. But not for long. Once Texans discover that their precious six cents won’t buy much of an army and navy, that they will have to clean up after their own natural disasters; and realize their new leaders are the same nincompoops they have successfully foisted off on the rest of us for years they will have to erect razor wire from El Paso to the Gulf to keep their citizens from escaping.
Of course we would immediately repatriate all Texas natives who had already moved north. As Texans have often said, America must not tolerate illegal immigrants.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
