A Texas secession platform item was passed in a special committee at the state's Republican convention on Wednesday, giving the movement a shot in the arm.
The Houston Chronicle reported that the secession group, called the Texas Nationalist Movement, organized the passage of the secession resolution in 22 counties and districts in March. A 31-member panel that decides what delegates will vote on passed the secession platform item "overwhelmingly," said Tanya Robertson, a Republican state official.
"It's going to be available for delegates to debate and vote on Friday during the convention," said Robertson, who has supported secession efforts in the past. "This is pretty big. This is really pretty huge."
Texas Nationalist Movement president Daniel Miller
said in a statement on the organization's website posted Wednesday that the platform resolution won two-thirds of the platform committee's votes, showing the momentum the idea has.
"We have said this for years. The people of Texas want an open debate and a vote on the issue of independence," Miller said in the website statement. "None more so than Texas Republicans. We have met some great Texans at this convention who have no previous connection with the TNM but are firm in their belief that the best people to govern Texas are Texans."
The platform item now goes to the permanent platform committee for a vote on Thursday, and the movement's executive director Nathan Smith sounded confident in his statement on the organizations' website.
"What has been great for our cause is the weak and extremely small amount of opposition at this convention to Texans having a vote on independence," Smith said in the statement. "It's understandable when 55 percent of the (Texas Republican Party) platform is dedicated to calling out the failures of and the excessive overreach of the federal government."
Former Texas governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry may have started the modern secession movement in 2009 when answering a question about succession. He said,
according to FactCheck.org, "If Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what may come out of that?"
Relatedly, a White House petition calling for the federal government to let Texas secede from the union has previously garnered more than 100,000 signatures,
according to The New York Times.
Lyle Denniston, an adviser with the National Constitution Center,
wrote in 2012 that the U.S. Supreme Court essentially shut the door on any secession effort in an 1861 ruling and that leaving the United States would likely require a constitutional amendment.
"Talk of secession, at least in some parts of the present Union, may well be an outlet for frustration with the way things are going in Washington, but such talk is a pipe dream, constitutionally speaking," Denniston wrote.
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