In the nine years that Rick Perry has been the governor of Texas (he's planning to run again in 2010, btw), this could be just about the dumbest thing he ever said:
"There's a lot of different scenarios," Perry said. "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."
He said when Texas entered the union in 1845 it was with the understanding it could pull out. However, according to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Texas negotiated the power to divide into four additional states at some point if it wanted to but not the right to secede.
It's factually incorrect for sure, but it's insulting and disreputable to an awful lot of his fellow Texans to a degree that just seems to totally evade him.
Sam Houston (who was basically the George Washington of Texas) served as Governor when Texas seceded to join the Confederacy, and he begged and pleaded with the Legislature and the Citizens to keep it from happening. Finally, the man who commanded the army that beat Santa Anna and who served as President of the Republic of Texas was evicted from the Governor's office.
Who wasn't represented at the Leg when those votes were taken? How about the hundreds of thousands of then enslaved African-Americans who were actually pretty keen on that Lincoln fella. How about the hundreds of thousands of Mexican Americans who's families had been farming and ranching here since the Escandon settlement - starting in 1749.
Today, we have a University named after Sam Houston, the largest city in the state named after him, and a sixty foot statue off I-45 in the Piney Woods between Houston and Dallas. Yet not even those of us who made and A+ in Texas history remember the names of the Confederates.
I guess we see which side Rick Perry chose to emulate.
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