Thompson: Secession wrong play for GOP

YES WE SAID SECESSION!

These god-damnend idiots in this state, in which I happen to live, are threatening to secede from the union, like many of the morons in the moronic state of Texas.

If I have the first clue that these knot-heads in the state legislature are going to do this, I will leave my house to the bank and get the hell out of here.

Of course this is absurd, but one can never tell these days. The hatred all over the Americas, not just in the U.S., is palpable.

Maybe this time, when certain southern states decide to secede from the union, D.C. should allow them to do so. No expensive war, no huge loss of life, no blood, no treasure....just a proper amount of time for people to be relocated from the region in which they live to another region if they so desire.

Why should the very divided people of the U.S. be made to live together when there is clearly this much hatred between the so-called left and right? As an independent, what I see is a two party system which has helped drive various wedges between the people of the U.S. for their own political gain. Most of that awfully scurrilous business, I have noted, has been on the side of the Republicans.

Admittedly, when I sense real danger, as I did a little over 6 years ago, I tend to lean left. Maybe there is some deep psychological reason for that....though I doubt it.....more, I think it is a result of my having come of age in the 60s and having watched Nixon tear families apart, with his "southern-strategy" meant to pit whites against blacks and the Democrats. Guess he hadn't counted on our generation. It worked for him, but it turned many of against the Republicans for years.

Truth be told, it is probably the children of the 60s (anti-war, pro-civil rights) and their grand-kids who really make up much of Obama's base and most of us are independents. Admittedly, many have joined the Democratic party as a result of the BuCheney Era, as a protest against a political party they see as amoral and leaning toward fascism or corporatism.

Whatever the case, this nation has changed in the last 30 years. It does not seem to resemble the country most of us learned to love. If the people of the South want to form their own nation, we should all seriously consider allowing them to do so.

We clearly do not share each others values, even about basic issues like torture, illegal wars and what the meaning of being pro-life is.

As the Guru said, it is better to fall apart than go to pieces.

thens Banner-Herald | Story updated at 6:52 pm on 4/25/2009

Jim Thompson

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There's no question Senate Resolution 632, a legislative proposal that should have been packaged with cases of survival rations and bottled water, a stash of automatic weapons, a mountain hideaway and enough tinfoil to make fashionable headgear for the entire family, was a Republican play to a hard-core segment of its conservative base.

The proposal, which got a 43-1 vote - including the official okey-dokeys of the local delegation, Republican Sens. Bill Cowsert and Ralph Hudgens - is nothing but a none-too-thinly veiled call to arms, a tangible expression of the dark wingnut fears that President Obama is just a pen stroke away from repealing the Second Amendment, dragooning America's young people into the Obama Youth and generally wreaking havoc with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In essence, the resolution - available for review online on the Georgia General Assembly's Web site - lays out the circumstances under which the Georgia Senate believes the state might be justified in ignoring the U.S. Constitution and/or seceding from the Union. It also contemplates the circumstances under which the United States itself might be dissolved.

Thankfully, the resolution doesn't have the force of law. Perhaps a bit surprisingly, a similar measure didn't even get a vote in the state House.

But, even though there is apparently no danger the legislature will include talk of secession in next year's General Assembly, there is still reason to ruminate on the whys and wherefores of Senate Resolution 632.
An important question is why the Senate felt it necessary to consider the measure at all.

The circumstances of its passage are an important factor here, in that they betray a certain embarrassment on the part of the bill's sponsors, which included such Gold Dome heavyweights as Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers, R-Hidden Compound.

Consider that the bill made its way through the Senate in the waning hours of the legislative session. That's a time so crammed with other business that Athens' own Sen. Cowsert, who prides himself on taking time to actually read legislation - which makes him, scarily enough, a rarity in the legislature - confessed to Banner-Herald government reporter Blake Aued that he'd read only a summary of the bill before voting on it.

For my money, it's likely the bill's sponsors hoped the resolution would slip through unnoticed, getting an affirmative vote in the crush of last-minute business.

It's all a part of what any number of Republican legislators see, inexplicably to me, as the delicate balancing act they must maintain between the wingnuts who will reliably vote for them, and the country-club conservatives who will reliably write the checks that allow them to campaign for, and hopefully remain in, their legislative seats.

Not putting too fine a point on it, it's my view that many Republicans in the statehouse believe they have to show they're just unhinged enough to take the wingnuts seriously, but not so unhinged that they can't be trusted with other people's money. Hence the need for Senate Resolution 632, and the concurrent need to get it through the legislative process without attracting too much attention to it.

The truth, though, is that Republican legislators are going to have to come to terms with the fact that they've got to risk alienating the wingnut contingent.

Consider, if you will, the other plays made to far-right GOP voters in this year's legislative session.
First, there was our own Sen. Hudgens' proposal to severely restrict embryonic stem cell research in the state. What the Republicans got for their trouble was considerable grief from the business-oriented (read check-writing) side of their party, which saw the measure as inhibiting the long-standing effort to make the state a center for biotechnology-related economic development.

Then, there was the legislators' failure, yet again, to pass legislation allowing communities to decide whether grocery, convenience and package stores should be allowed to sell alcohol on Sundays.

While that failure is hailed by the far-right, it is causing increasing ire among less-doctrinaire conservatives.
And, finally, there was the legislators' failure, for the second year in a row, to get anything done with regard to a coherent transportation funding plan. While this was not a big deal for the far-right conservatives populating Georgia's rural areas, it was most assuredly a big deal for the state's business community, the people who write the really big checks to lawmakers.

Senate Resolution 632 might have helped Senate Republicans hang on to their far-right supporters, but the question is whether that was the smart play to make.

• Jim Thompson is editorial page editor of the Athens Banner-Herald. He can be contacted at (706) 208-2222 or by e-mail at jim.thompson@onlineathens.com.

Originally published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Sunday, April 26, 2009

Let The Sun Shine In......