The Republicans are so desperate and reckless they are talking crazy. The Governor of Texas actually suggested that Texas might secede because of the policies of Obama. Sounds a lot like the language of the segregationists during the 1960s.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry isn't ruling out the possibility his state may one day secede from the nation.
Speaking to an energetic and angry tea party crowd in Austin Wednesday evening, the Lone Star State governor suggested secession may happen in the future should the federal government not change its fiscal polices.
"There's a lot of different scenarios," Perry told the rally, according to the Associated Press. "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot." (Video below: Tea party fires up debate)
Perry, who is beginning to gear up for what could be a challenging re-election race, rejected more than $500 million in federal stimulus funds earlier this year and has been highly critical of President Obama's stimulus package. (Related: Joe "The Plumber" speaks at Michigan tea party)
His comments come a week after endorsing a resolution in the Texas state House reasserting state sovereignty over federal mandates.
Specifically it states that "all compulsory federal legislation that directs states to comply under threat of civil or criminal penalties or sanctions or that requires states to pass legislation or lose federal funding be prohibited or repealed."
Texas, America's second biggest state in area and population, was its own nation for 10 years before joining the United States in 1845.
Should Texas one day secede, one man may already be vying to be its president. Actor Chuck Norris said last month he may be interested in the post.
“I may run for president of Texas,” Norris wrote in a column posted at WorldNetDaily. “That need may be a reality sooner than we think. If not me, someone someday may again be running for president of the Lone Star state, if the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state.”
The leader of this madness could be a sensationalistic talk show host. This from the Independent in March:
Many strange things have happened in America, in this young age of Obama. But none stranger, surely, than that the de facto leadership of the Republican Party has passed into the hands of a right-wing talk radio host.
The moment of that passage came on Saturday 28 February, when Rush Limbaugh was the closing speaker at CPAC, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference here in Washington, normally a festival for Republican true believers. As I wrote in this space last week, the arriving delegates looked like stragglers from Napoleon's army in the 1812 retreat from Moscow, shellshocked still by their crushing election defeat. But when they left they were walking on air – or rather, the reverberating echoes of Limbaugh's address, in which he reaffirmed conservative values and stated that he wanted the new President to fail.
For many, it was an unsettling moment: not because of the black shirt he was wearing (Limbaugh's bloviating has always had a whiff of Il Duce), or because John McCain, the party's defeated White House candidate, had chosen not to attend. What made it unsettling was that politics had not merely fused with entertainment. It had surrendered to entertainment.
In some ways, this new hour of Rush is no surprise. Ever since 1987, when federal regulators dropped the "fairness doctrine" that required stations to balance competing points of view, conservative talk radio has been the trumpet section of the Republican orchestra. And for almost as long, its acknowledged leader has been Limbaugh, heard on 600 radio stations and commanding a daily audience of 20 million or more.
In these 20-odd years, conservative radio has come a long way. By coincidence, on the very same day as Limbaugh was propelling the genre to new fame or infamy at CPAC, Paul Harvey died in Arizona at the age of 90. In many respects, Harvey was Limbaugh's forerunner. His show ran a mere 15 minutes, compared with Limbaugh's three-hour blast every weekday. But he offered his own mix of news and and conservative comment, with similar stratospheric ratings. In his heyday, in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties, Harvey had 20 million listeners. But he was cheerleading not so much for Republicans as for the American way, at the zenith of the American century. Never, one suspects, would he have lent himself to something like CPAC.
They've become a joke:
Papers filed by political humorists in Federal Court accuse The Republican Party, its elected officials, conservative bloggers, Fox News, and CNBC of "crossing the line in self parody" and "creating a situation that is difficult to satire" by acting "so effing weird." The comics, some of them funny, are seeking damages in the hundreds of dollars to make up for lost revenue.
A visibly legendary Mort Sahl addressed reporters in a threadbare sweater, his hands flopping nervously in the breeze since the newspaper he planned to carry had gone bankrupt. "This is a career for many of us," said Sahl shyly. "Politicians and talk show hosts holding up tea bags day after day has taken it's toll and jokes are becoming increasingly difficult to write. For example, the KKK protested at Republican headquarters and burned uh ah a giant tea bag on the front lawn. See? No place to go. I give up."
A noticeably muscular Carrot Top whispered to Sahl that the Klan had, in fact, burned a giant bag on the lawn of the Republican party. Sahl's head exploded. Shocked reported recoiled in horror then high-fived because was sort of cool looking, really.
In a separate suit, Richard and Sal from the Howard Stern show claimed that Republicans had ruined the humorous value of tea bagging.
Lawyers for the class action suit showed tapes of recent episodes of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and the House Republican caucus. After the crowd stopped laughing they pointed out that these were actual video tapes, not way out parodies. That seemed to confuse people. Lawyers played the tapes again and then people got very quiet and sad and most of them walked away from the TV and didn't say anything for a very long time but they told themselves that they would never vote for a Republican again, ever. Later they forgot all about the scary tapes but wondered why they didn't see Republicans any more like they used to in the old days.
The teabagging event organized by Limbaugh and FOX News was a farce:
Those messages might explain why Fox News, though actively promoting the "tea party" protests for tax day, tried to argue that it was not behind yesterday's coast-to-coast events. But Fox News analyst Tobin Smith, who took the stage in Lafayette Square yesterday, evidently didn't get the memo. "On behalf of Fox News Channel," he told more than 500 mud-spattered demonstrators, "I want to say: Welcome to the Comedy Channel of America, Washington, D.C."
After a few preliminaries, he went into a Fox News commercial for anchor Glenn Beck. "Anybody watching Glenn?" he asked to cheers. "That was a shameless plug, wasn't it? Glenn says hello as well. He's out at another tea party." Indeed he was, as were Sean Hannity and Neil Cavuto.
A small group of counterdemonstrators, wearing ballgowns, tuxedoes and pig snouts, interrupted and were stripped of their signs. Smith seized the display as an opportunity to highlight the Fox News slogan. "You know what 'Fair and Balanced' means?" he asked. " 'Fair and Balanced' means we take our message and try to overcompensate for their lack of message." Smith left with instructions: "Keep watching Fox, will you?"
The theme was echoed in some of the homemade signs the demonstrators carried, including "Watch Fox News," "Thank You Fox News," and even a recommendation: "Move Glenn Beck to 7 PM."
Without the spectacle of a 1773-style tea-bag dump in the square, the handmade signs became the focus of the event. Though ostensibly an anti-tax protest, it was more of an anti-Obama festival. Among the messages: "The Audacity of the Dope," "O Crap" and Obama as an acronym for "One Big Awful Mistake America." Some messages were ugly ("Napolitano -- Obama's Gestapo Queen," "Hang 'Em High Traitors," and a sign held by a young girl saying "Victim of Child Tax Abuse"). Others were funny ("Don't Talk to Me! I Forgot My Teleprompter"). Certain ones had sinister overtones ("Tax Slavery Sucks," and "Obama bin Lyin"). Then there was the guy holding a Cabbage Patch doll by its hair with the message: "My kid's growth stunted by your stimulus."
