Texas Secession Movement 2016: Lone Star State Republicans Vote To Leave The United States

Texas wants out, again.

The movement for the Lone Star State to secede from the United States is gaining some traction again after a state Republican committee voted Wednesday to allow delegates at Friday's state GOP convention to vote on a platform to push a divorce from the United States.

It’s unlikely the resolution will succeed, but eager secessionists are giddy things have gotten this far.

“It's going to be available for delegates to debate and vote on Friday during the convention," Tanya Robertson, a state Republican official who has pushed for secession before, told the Houston Chronicle. "This is pretty big. This is really pretty huge.”

It's not the first time Texans have tried to cut ties with the world’s largest economy, which gives more monetary support to the Lone Star state than the state contributes in federal tax dollars. Texas has a rich history of independence and once claimed to be its own nation before the United States absorbed it. That independent streak manifests in many ways, like Lone Star beer's "national beer of Texas" tagline and Texas Monthly calling itself the "national magazine of Texas."

The modern-day movement started in the 1990s. Following secessionist activity that culminated in an armed standoff in 1997, more diplomatic groups have pushed to get secessionist language onto Republican primary ballots every four years. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry even made a thinly veiled threat in 2009 that if Washington, D.C., didn’t “listen” to the American people, then his state might cut ties. Three years later the Texas Nationalist Movement reported that its membership had increased 300 percent and that its website traffic had increased by 900 percent. A White House petition in 2012 gained some 125,000 signatures, prompting a response from the administration of President Barack Obama, which basically said no way.

But though some Texas Republicans may want to go it alone as a country, it’s not clear other Texans are clamoring for independence. A poll taken soon after Perry’s comments showed that 75 percent of Texas residents wanted to stay in the U.S. Thirty-one percent thought their state had the right to leave, but just 18 percent said they’d vote in favor of a secession, according to the Huffington Post.