Texas pondering

[dvandom]

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. 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.

Comments

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

First, the instrument that brought Texas into the Union was a joint resolution of Congress. The 1844 attempt at a treaty failed to get 2/3 of a Senate vote.

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:

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

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.

[ndgmtlcd.livejournal.com]

You've just convinced me that California might very well split apart.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

It's been tried before.

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.

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

California ought to split apart. When I lived there I used to get woefully tired of having to live by various ridiculous restrictions that were clearly in place to try and control some aspect or another of the Los Angeles basin and had no relevance at all to where I lived. I'm thinking right around 35° north latitude would be about right for the border between California and... oh... let's call it Cascadia.