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It has become fashionable in Texas politics to play the secession card, claiming (falsely) that the treaty that brought Texas into the union has an opt-out clause that would let them withdraw at any time. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
redneckgaijin has commented on how stupid a move that would be (and will likely need to correct me on the next bit in a few places), even if it wasn't the sort of thing that leads to a shooting war.
But, from what I've heard, the treaty does give Texas the option of splitting into several smaller states at a later date, should they vote to do so. I'm pretty sure they could work out a way to do this that ensured all the new Senators would be Republicans, plus it would inflate the Texan electoral college representation significantly. Sure, it would be expensive, but it's the sort of (potentially short-sighted) power grab I'm surprised none of these secessionists have proposed. Split into five pieces, and "Greater Texas" has ten Senate seats, at least until the regional stresses break up the voting bloc (i.e. the border states and the non-border states would probably disagree on some things). The House seats would probably not change significantly, they might pick up a seat or two on rounding errors if they finesse things right.
Of course, it wouldn't really look like anything BUT a naked power grab, so it might be hard to sell to the sane segment of the Texan population, which I have been assured is not the Empty Set.
redneckgaijin has commented on how stupid a move that would be (and will likely need to correct me on the next bit in a few places), even if it wasn't the sort of thing that leads to a shooting war.But, from what I've heard, the treaty does give Texas the option of splitting into several smaller states at a later date, should they vote to do so. I'm pretty sure they could work out a way to do this that ensured all the new Senators would be Republicans, plus it would inflate the Texan electoral college representation significantly. Sure, it would be expensive, but it's the sort of (potentially short-sighted) power grab I'm surprised none of these secessionists have proposed. Split into five pieces, and "Greater Texas" has ten Senate seats, at least until the regional stresses break up the voting bloc (i.e. the border states and the non-border states would probably disagree on some things). The House seats would probably not change significantly, they might pick up a seat or two on rounding errors if they finesse things right.
Of course, it wouldn't really look like anything BUT a naked power grab, so it might be hard to sell to the sane segment of the Texan population, which I have been assured is not the Empty Set.
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Now I want to see the democrats try to steer the car of the nation but they can't because everyone wants to drive, republicans want to but can't because they can't hire a driver at currant rates, and the libertarians can't because even though every one of them has the qualifications, no one's sober enough to get behind the wheel.
I never saw why country breakup is seen as so strange. It's quite common, even in recent history, for reasons ranging from invasion to culture to earthquake.
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I wonder if politics in the US could be improved by giving everyone mike stands balanced for throwing. It works in Canada and England.
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The secessionists are idiots and, while splitting up into four states might be a decent short-term power grab, it would probably end up butchering the state economy (which has so far been fairly recession-proof, compared to much of the rest of the country.)
The thing that really interests me, mentioned by somebody somewhere, is the idea of the state attempting to block local implementation of things on 10th Amendment grounds. It would almost certainly fail, of course, as of the current Supreme Court nobody but Scalia and Thomas will make a ruling that would tear down seventy years of government welfare programs. But I'd argue that the public debate would be worth having--I don't think Social Security, for instance, is a bad program but I think that implementing it without a Constitutional amendment was a bad precedent that has led to too much power creep.
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Second, technically any state may split itself into as many new states as it wants. The applicable part of the Constitution is Article IV, Section 3:
To the best of my knowledge this has been done three times: Kentucky and West Virginia were part of Virginia when they achieved statehood, and Maine was part of Massachusetts when it achieved statehood.
However, both the old state and Congress have to sign off on the split. (West Virginia'a creation during the Civil War had the permission of a rump, pro-Union Virginia government created by and based in... West Virginia.) Absent some greater compromise, the answer of the current Congress to four new Republican states created by Texas would be, "no, HELL no," and thus it wouldn't happen.
Third, and finally, Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com did a study of Texas splitting in five parts. (http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/04/messing-with-texas.html) His analysis was that it would be difficult to get a perfect ten-Senator voting bloc, if the state was split in even parts. Split evenly, you're pretty much guaranteed one all-Democratic state along the Rio Grande and at least one state (the one centered on Austin) with a dead-even partisan split.
And if Republicans decided to create four new Wyoming-sized, Republican-lock states with one Representative and two Senators each... well, the problem there is that Texas as it is now is about 55% Republican, 45% Democrat at the most. It might be much closer than that, and as the years pass the margin is shrinking. Four states on the scale of Wyoming- 400,000 people each- comes up to 1.6 million out of 25 million... 6.4% of the total population of Texas. They'd have to be very, VERY careful indeed to avoid whittling down their margin in the remaining Texas to nothing...
No, splitting apart isn't in Texas' future. Secession- and the war which would certainly follow, as even most secessionists acknowledge now- is the more probable option.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Jefferson
Before that, on the eve of the Civil War it was proposed to break the southern third of the newly formed California away from the rest and make it slave territory, as part of an attempt to bridge the gap between North and South. Like all other such efforts, it fell through, especially since such pro-slavery support as existed in California was concentrated in the gold fields and in the central valley- well north of the proposed divide.
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