By David Faris, NPR.org, April 28, 2009 · During the campaign, President Obama talked a good game about bipartisanship. Now he has the perfect opportunity to achieve something that people on both sides of the aisle desperately want: kicking Texas out of the union.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry recently implied that Texas might need to leave the United States if the mean old federal government doesn't stop doing things like sending stimulus money and slightly raising the top marginal tax rates. These things being obvious markers of impending fascism (unlike, say, unsympathetically institutionalizing a global torture regime), Perry thinks it's time to go. Unsurprisingly, a majority of Texas Republicans approved of these remarks.
The transition should be peaceful — no need for 600,000 Americans to die like the last time a state tried to leave the union. These kinds of things are best handled with negotiations — just ask the Czechs and the Slovaks, who dissolved Czechoslovakia like an old married couple who remain great friends but just don't want to sleep together anymore.
- First, Texas should be given the option of taking neighboring Oklahoma, Alabama and Louisiana with them. These states are reliably deep red, and are also three of the biggest tax drains in the country, raking in federal dollars while kvetching about Obama's tyranny. In return, the U.S. gets to keep the liberal oasis of Austin, like the little swath of Azerbaijan surrounded by Armenia and Iran.
- Second, Texas Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton should immediately be seized by the Washington Nationals as part of the deal. The Washington Wizards should also demand star San Antonio point guard Tony Parker, who is French and therefore probably unwelcome in what is likely to be the violently xenophobic Republic of Texas. The U.S. would, of course, have to cough up some native Texans, like Houston Astros meatballer Brandon Backe.
- Finally, the Republic of Texas should arrange a population transfer with the United States, like how Turkey and Greece exchanged all their misplaced Turks and Greeks after the first World War — only this time without the forced marches and famine. Basically, we get all the New Yorker-reading lefties, and Texas can have all the crazies — millenarians with basement stockpiles of semiautomatics, true believers who blockade abortion clinics, paranoiacs who think The Gays are coming to get them, and anyone who believes that evolution is "just a theory."
Getting rid of Texas is a once-a-century opportunity for America's new leader. Texas Republicans have spoken. The only question is, "Are you listening President Obama?"
David Faris recently completed the 27th grade at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studies Middle East politics. He looks forward to adding another rogue state to his passport when he visits the Republic of Texas.
