Strongest among Southern Republicans
A Bright Line Watch/YouGov poll of 2,750 Americans taken in late June 2021, revealed that a jaw-dropping 66 percent of Southern Republicans indicated a willingness for their State to secede from the United States and join other seceding States. This was up from an already high level of 50 percent in a poll following the January 6 incursion of crowds of protestors into the Capitol building. Most of these protestors were frustrated by questionable election results but had no destructive or evil intent. Overall, in the June national survey, 37 percent indicated a “willingness to secede.” Republicans in the Western Mountain regions also evidenced strong sentiments favoring secession at 43 percent. Curiously, Democrats on the West Coast and in the Northeast also showed above average sentiment for secession, but obviously for different reasons.
A University of Virginia (UVA) analysis in July of 2,012 voters, about half for Biden and half for Trump, also indicated surprisingly high sentiment for the secession of their State. Approximately 52 percent of Trump supporters favored secession to join other seceding “Red states.” Remarkably, even 41 percent of Democrats favor secession to join seceding “Blue states.” These poll results indicate a strong ideological enmity and distrust between the two parties. About 83 percent of the Trump voters were concerned about radicalism and immorality ruining the country. Curiously, 62 percent of Biden voters were concerned about radicalism and immorality, but perhaps from a different perspective.
The survey showed that Republicans and Democrats strongly distrust each other. More than 80 percent of both parties believe the opposing party presents “a clear and present danger to American democracy.” Much of this distrust has been created by undeniably radical social Marxist policies. Much more has been the deliberate result of an irresponsibly partisan mainstream media, which has little moral compass or regard for truth. “Can’t we all just get along” sighs only tend to bury important truths, and burying truth only makes things worse.
According to Dr. Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics,
“The divide between Trump and Biden voters is deep, wide, and dangerous…The scope is unprecedented, and it will not be easily fixed.”
The June YouGov poll also found that 50 percent of Southern independents favor secession, while only 20 percent of Democrats favor it. In the Mountain states, 35 percent of independents favor secession but only 17 percent of Democrats.
Secession sentiment is fairly strong among independents generally with 43 percent of independents in the “Heartland” favoring it, compared to only 34 percent of Republicans, and 19 percent of Democrats. Secession sentiment among independents ranges from 33 percent on the Pacific coast to 50 percent in the South.
Democrat sentiment for secession is highest on the Pacific Coast with 47 percent favoring secession. Only 33 percent of independents and 27 percent of Republicans want the West Coast to secede from the United States.
In the Northeast 39 percent of Democrats favor secession, while 35 percent of independents and 26 percent of Republicans favor it.
These statistics confirm what the University of Virginia study found. There are two ideological movements for secession. Conservative and Constitutionally oriented Red State partisans want to secede from socially and economically radical Blue State dominance, and Blue State partisans want a government unhindered by Constitutional restrictions and traditional religious and moral values. The Blue State partisans are geographically separated between the Pacific Coast and Northeast.
Dividing the United States into a Red Constitutional Republic and two Blue Social Democracies (Pacific and Northeast), however, presents numerous national security and economic risks and difficulties for divided families. Nevertheless, the prospect for conservatives that they must give up freedom for the sake of unity is grim and unthinkable. Our hope for now should be in the 2022 and 2024 elections, and that many former Biden voters and Democrat partisans will be convinced by the terrible reality and ruinous failure of Biden and Democrat Party policies that the nation must return to the traditional Constitutional and moral values that made us a great nation, and which are absolutely necessary for our continued survival.
Is Secession legal and Constitutional? Even Congressman Abraham Lincoln said so in 1848:
“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable and most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.”
Might does not make right, and decades of propaganda cannot change the truth. The 1776 Declaration of Independence was referenced by the South Carolina Declaration of the Immediate Causes for Secession on December 24, 1860:
“Thus were established the two great principles asserted by the Colonies, namely: the right of a State to govern itself; and the right of a people to abolish a Government when it becomes destructive of the ends for which it was instituted.”
Secession was and is legal, but the question today and always is whether secession is desirable. We are headed for some extraordinary tough decisions and hardships, unless voters wake up and throw out the social Marxists and their spineless establishment apologists in the 2022 and 2024 primaries and general election.
The 1860 South Carolina Declaration of the Causes for Secession has become a popular tool for political-correctness-chained academics to prove the Civil War was only about slavery. The word “slavery” or words or phrases pertaining to it are used 18 times in a total word count of 2,209. The document uses the word “Constitution” 21 times, which seems a more prevalent theme, if you insist on reading for word count rather than analytical context.
More than a dozen paragraphs point out the history of the British Colonies and United States from 1765 to 1860 pertaining to the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights to prove South Carolina’s Constitutional Right of Secession. Most of the slavery words were complaining about Northern violations of Article 4 of the Constitution and other breaches of promise regarding handling of runaway slaves. While I can fully understand and sympathize with the position of 14 Northern States and probably Abraham Lincoln on the unpleasant obligation to enforce Article 4, it is ridiculous to assert the War was only about slavery because South Carolina used violations of Article 4 as proof of Northern unfaithfulness to Constitutional principles. South Carolina in particular, but other Southern and Border States generally were very concerned that the North was abandoning Jeffersonian principles of government and seeking national greatness based on consolidated and centralized big government.
The Tariff Wars from 1824 through 1860, though not mentioned in the South Carolina Declaration of 1860, were a prime example of Northern sectional politics and government that ignored Southern interests. South Carolina had threatened secession in 1824 and 1833 (Nullification Crisis) over unfair tariffs that benefited Northern sectional interests and exploited and harmed the South.
The Northern myth that the Civil War was only about freeing slaves still rankles knowledgeable Southerners and others not bound by politically correct chains. This is largely because politicians, PC academics, and the media so frequently use it to make the South a racist and traitorous punching bag and perennial scapegoat.
This is true even on Fox News on which otherwise conservative commentators and contributors frequently refer to the U.S. or the Republicans as fighting a war to end slavery. This is such a shallow, half-baked misrepresentation that it belongs in the propaganda hall of fame.
The most recent and egregious example of bad scholarship serving as a punching bag to slander and defame the South, is Fox News commentator Brett Baier’s new book, To Rescue the Republic, which basically tries to upgrade General and later President U.S. Grant to the status of a national moral hero. Grant did some noble things, but he allowed and encouraged several Union generals to make total war on Southern civilians, resulting in over 50,000 dead, and as President presided over one of the most corrupt administrations in U.S. history. During Reconstruction, he allowed Radical Republicans to go wild in oppressing and exploiting the South. Baier apparently knows little about Reconstruction that does not follow the latest liberal academic spin, distortions, and coverups from writers such as Eric Foner, who believes Reconstruction was an “unfinished revolution” and anti-Confederate zealot Ty Seidule, who indoctrinated West Point cadets to believe Robert E. Lee and Confederates were traitors. Does Baier know that during Reconstruction, approximately 228,000 Confederate veterans were disenfranchised to assure Republican carpetbaggers would win elections and establish the South as a Radical Republican stronghold. Does Baier know that the largely black Radical Republican Union League militias also stirred up racial resentment and resorted to intimidation to keep blacks from voting Democrat.
The Radical Republicans of the Reconstruction era have been replaced by Radical Democrats in the Obama-Biden administrations. Baier wrote an excellent book on President Eisenhower, and Grant had a noble side, but the problem with Baier’s new book is that in his attempt to upgrade Grant, he slanders the South and Southerners as racists and traitors. One politically prominent Fox Contributor called Confederates “traitors” in reviewing Baier’s book. Baier’s book will contribute to Southern alienation from a distorted, anti-Southern national narrative that is being pushed even by Fox News. As an antidote, I recommend U.S. Grant’s Failed Presidency by Philip Leigh, published in March 2019.
Republicans should win the 2022 and 2024 elections and avoid more disastrous policy mistakes and calls for Red State secessions if they can assure fair elections and resist virtue-signaling opportunities to slander and enrage Southerners.