Everyone has their own way of coping with or celebrating the results of last night's election. For his part, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott doesn't appear to have made good on his threat to arrest any European election monitors (who are, by the way, due to give a news conference in Washington tomorrow detailing their findings). Instead, Abbott responded to President Obama's re-election by releasing a brief statement this morning via Facebook. It reads, in full:
Texas remains one of the reddest states in the country and is the last bastion of conservatism. Now more than ever Texas must lead the nation! I'll continue to fight every day against an overreaching federal government to protect the liberties that Texans hold so dearly.
In response, more than 100 of Abbott's Facebook fans all have roughly the same suggestion. In the words of one guy: "Secede. I'm done with the Republic as a whole. They're going to he'll [sic], we don't need to go with them."
Calls for secession are nothing new around here, obviously. The whole thing feels sort of charmingly retro, in fact, right down to the multitude of folks on Abbott's page who are also nominating Chuck Norris to lead the new Republic of Texas. (The man is 72, guys. Can we not just let him relax and tell his grandchildren some bedtime stories about roundhouse kicking terrorists in the face?)
Predictably, one of the loudest voices calling for Texas to get the hell out of the union this morning is the Texas Nationalist Movement, a Nederland-based group that's been around since 1995 or so. Several of the posters on Abbott's wall are linking to a petition TNM has created, asking that the Texas Legislature formally consider secession. The petition's been around since February of this year; in the last day, though, it's garnered several dozen new signatures and been shared on Facebook about 200 times.
So who is the Texas Nationalist Movement, anyway? TNM President Daniel Miller was interviewed by Glenn Beck back in July , in the final days of Beck's stint on Fox News. Beck asked Miller how many members TNM has; Miller hedged, saying they've had "over 250,000 people in and out of our organization" at various times. That adds up to "a fairly broad base of support," he told Beck.
Probably not. But Miller is certainly trying to seize the moment, releasing a statement on the group's website. It reads, in part, "This presidential election serves as a clear signal from the rest of the Union to Texas -- we do not care for your right of local self-government and we do not share your values."
Obama, Miller adds, "represented a descent into the final destruction of the republican form of government envisioned by the Founders of the United States and Texas. With this, Texas cannot abide."
The outrage party is continuing at full speed at both Abbott's and TNM's Facebook pages and will likely do so for at least a few more hours.
