Texas Republicans are already using the s-word.
One party official from Southeast Texas calls for -- not secession -- separation.
"Why should Vermont and Texas live under the same government?" writes Hardin County Republican treasurer Peter Morrison, a Ron Paul supporter and author of a race-heavy Tea Party newsletter.
"Let each go her own way," he writes, demanding an "amicable divorce" from the U.S. and from the "maggots" who re-elected President Obama.
Evoking the history of Confederate soldiers who refused to surrender after Gettysburg, Morrison, 33, calls for Texans to fight "in hopes that Providence might shine upon our cause."
Morrison is particularly angry at Asian-Americans and Hispanics who backed Obama, accusing them of voting on an "ethnic basis."
"'They' re-elected Obama," Morrison wrote. "He is their president."
Oh, did I mention that Morrison was chosen by former State Board of Education Chairman Don McLeroy to help screen Texas public school textbooks?
Morrison's nasty newsletter has several hundred readers. It's republished on Tea Party websites and redistributed by evangelical Republicans.
He has donated up to $40,000 per candidate and used his Morrison Report to oppose business conservatives allied with Texas House Speaker Joe Straus. In 2010, he used his newsletter to criticize Straus' rabbi and wrote that Straus "lacks the moral compass" to lead.
I called Kent Batman of Kountze, chairman of the Hardin County Republican Party, to ask if the rest of his county party backs secession.
Batman's response: "Wow."
He sighed and said, "OK, well -- I guess I need to start taking a look at his newsletters."
Morrison is a home- schooler and one of Hardin County's more libertarian Republicans, Batman said.
"People around here are asking why Texas is so different from the rest of the country, why we see things so differently," Batman said.
"But I don't think a lot of people here are saying we ought to leave the Union."
Another Republican, former U.S. Senate candidate Larry Kilgore of Arlington, writes on his website he will run for governor in 2014 under the name "SECEDE Kilgore."
It didn't work so well last time.
