Oklatexarkalamissianageorgialinatuckysee!

Cartoon from The New Yorker.

Click here for an article entitled State of the Dis-Union, itself from an article on Crooks & Liars by David Neiwert entitled Can We Help the Would-Be Secessionists Pack? 675,000 people from all 50 states have signed digital petitions on https://petitions.whitehouse.gov to secede from the U.S. The White House promises to respond if there are more than 25,000 signatures on any one petition; so far, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas have met that requirement.

"... the primary backer of secession mania is the California-based TeaParty.org, also known as the 1776 Tea Party.

One article posted on the group’s website states: 'When the Federal Government sets out to ruin the lives of law abiding citizens by making laws that are against God’s law, then it is fit and proper to make a concerted attempt by any state to secede from the union to become a new government should the majority of the citizens agree.'”

There were similar rumblings when W was reelected in 2004. However:

The difference between 2004 and 2012, however, is the people grumbling about secession eight years ago weren’t taken seriously by their political party and didn’t wield much influence over its party’s leaders. Not so with the tea party.

Another difference that can’t be denied, said Hamilton County Democratic Party Chairman Tim Burke, is the role that race plays in the current debate.

“I continue to believe that a lot of people out there, unfortunately, have difficulty believing America could elect an African-American president,” Burke said.

Referring to comments that Romney made to donors after the election alleging Obama won, in part, because he promised “gifts” to black and Hispanic voters, Burke added, “You just can’t continue to alienate the non-white people of the United States.”

Most historians conclude the conservative wing of the Republican Party first came to prominence in the late 1960s, as part of what’s been dubbed “the Southern strategy.” (Click here for my blog posting, Republican Southern Strategy: Lee Atwater.)

That’s when the GOP began appealing to conservative, white Democrats from the Deep South who were upset by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the desegregation of public schools.

What to name the new entity? Hunter at Daily Kos suggests United Galts of America, or New Jesusland; I like Oklatexarkalamissianageorgialinatuckysee.