If Hillary Clinton wins the 2016 presidential election, an overwhelming majority of Texans who support Donald Trump would want the state to secede from the union.
At least those were the results of a poll conducted this past week by Public Policy Polling, a left-wing polling group known for asking kooky questions just to see what the answer might be. Last winter, they polled Republican primary voters to see if they would support bombing the fictional city of Agrabah from the Disney animated film “Aladdin.”
But, according to the poll, only one out of four Texans generally support seceding from America. Those numbers increase substantially when faced with the prospect of a President Hillary Clinton.
The overall results for Texas secession if Hillary Clinton were elected president were 48 percent opposing and 40 percent supporting. But among Trump supporters, the results were 61 percent supporting and 29 percent opposing.
Interestingly, 18 percent of Clinton supporters would also support secession if she wins the election.
But, can Texas actually secede? There’s a longstanding bit of Lone Star State folklore that suggests the state’s constitution includes a provision that allows it to leave the union, but like many pieces of folklore, it’s just a tall tale.
In fact, the late constitutionalist U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia was quoted as saying, “If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede.”
But, there is already a Texas Secessionist organization working to get the state out of the union. And, according to that group’s website, secession is an issue that hasn’t been fully addressed—and that ambiguity might be enough to propel their agenda:
[The Texas Constitution] does state (in Article 1, Section 1) that “Texas is a free and independent State, subject only to the Constitution of the United States…” (note that it does not state “…subject to the President of the United States…” or “…subject to the Congress of the United States…” or “…subject to the collective will of one or more of the other States…”)
Neither the Texas Constitution, nor the Constitution of the united States, explicitly or implicitly disallows the secession of Texas (or any other “free and independent State”) from the United States. Joining the “Union” was ever and always voluntary, rendering voluntary withdrawal an equally lawful and viable option (regardless of what any self-appointed academic, media, or government “expert”—including Abraham Lincoln himself—may have ever said).
Both the original (1836) and the current (1876) Texas Constitutions also state that “All political power is inherent in the people … they have at all times the inalienable right to alter their government in such manner as they might think proper.”
Likewise, each of the united States is “united” with the others explicitly on the principle that “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed” and “whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends [i.e., protecting life, liberty, and property], it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government” and “when a long train of abuses and usurpations…evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”
If nothing else, the poll results demonstrate how much Clinton is opposed in a state where she supposedly trails Trump by less than 10 points.
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