|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The Texas Republican Party has an official new platform declaring that the 2020 Presidential election was illegitimate and calling for a referendum to secede from the United States. Oh boy. Here we go.
The party is calling for a vote on succeeding in 2023. They are asking the state Legislature to pass a bill “requiring a referendum in the 2023 general election for the people of Texas to determine whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation.”
This is being made fun of online but let’s take it seriously just for a minute. The Declaration of Independence states that when a government no longer serves the people, it is “their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” This is an American ethos and Texas is evoking it. A Supreme Court ruling in 1869 prevented states from seceding but that was a very different Supreme Court. In an era when Texas is fighting for every bit of legislation from abortion rights to online rights, is this so far out there? I think we are remiss if we don’t take these efforts seriously, no matter how out there they seem.
This new GOP platform goes on. It describes homosexuality as “an abnormal lifestyle choice,” opposes “all efforts to validate transgender identity,” calls from a total ban on abortion and asks for a full repeal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It seems to include pretty much everything Republicans have ever said that they want on Fox News. It’s a biggie but you know the saying: Everything is bigger in Texas.
