Wipe that sweat from your anxious brow, America! For one long month you've suffered in limbo, wondering if one of our nation's greatest states would remain a part of the union or just quit the whole endeavor because of taxes, or something.
Fear no longer. Texas will be with us forever, or at least, as long as Rick Perry's around.
A little over a month ago, Governor Perry backed a Texas state resolution reminding the federal government that they better not mess with Texas, because that would interfere with states' rights. Perry, like many governors of states with little to no public infrastructure to support the legions of newly unemployed and uninsured flooding the books now that there's a Depression on, does not care to take federal dollars for things like unemployment insurance. It's intrusive!
Somehow Perry's support for this resolution got spun as a threat to secede, which it kind of was.
A week later he attended one of those tea party rallies, the important events where angry citizens dressed up in nude leotards and hoisted aloft inflatable Freedom Muppets, and suggested that "if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, who knows what might come out of that?"
So everybody in Texas got very excited at the thought of erecting border fences to protect their new republic against intrusion from both Mexico and the "United" States of America, and they fantasized about their bright future just livin' on barbecue and crude oil (because nobody grows vegetables in that barren state of desert rocks).
Perry eventually had to clarify that actually Texas would deign to keep its status in the union and its bazillion electoral votes:
I have never advocated for secession and never will.
Like the president, members of Congress and every other state governor, I have sworn oaths to our nation and Constitution. My sincere pledge to uphold and defend the Constitution has fueled my concern and my statements about the recent unprecedented expansion of our federal government.
Sam Houston is rolling in his grave.
Texas history expert Sara K. Smith writes for NBC and Wonkette.
