Texas Secession Movement Picks Up Steam

Enough Texans have signed a petition to secede that the White House must issue a response.

Larry Scott Kilgore, a perennial Republican candidate from Arlington, a Dallas suburb, said he was running for governor in 2014 and would legally change his name to Larry Secede Kilgore, with Secede in capital letters. As his Web page, secedekilgore.com, puts it: “Secession! All other issues can be dealt with later.”

In Texas, talk of secession in recent years has steadily shifted to the center from the fringe right. It has emerged as a radical echo of the state Republican leadership’s anti-Washington, D.C., pro-Texas-sovereignty mantra on a variety of issues, including health care and environmental regulations. For some Texans, the renewed interest in the subject serves simply as comic relief after a crushing election defeat.

But it is a far more serious matter for other proponents of secession and its sister ideology, Texas nationalism — a focus of the Texas Nationalist Movement and other groups that want the state to become an independent nation, as it was in the 1830s and 1840s.

The official in East Texas, Peter Morrison, the treasurer of the Hardin County Republican Party, said he had received overwhelming support from conservative Texans and overwhelming opposition from liberals outside the state in response to his comments in his newsletter. He said it may take time for “people to appreciate that the fundamental cultural differences between Texas and other parts of the United States may be best addressed by an amicable divorce, a peaceful separation.”

In 2009, Kilgore ran for governor as a Republican, and talked about how much he hates the United States and its flag.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.