Anger at Feds Drives Growing Interest in Seceding From the Union

Secession is
a recurring theme in recent years. Remember all of those petitions
to the White House to
Let My People Go signed by ticked off residents of mostly red
states, but some blue ones, too? Well, perhaps sparked by all of
the debate leading to the failed secession vote in Scotland,
Americans have a continuing interest in the idea—so says a
Reuters/Ipsos poll. According to Reuters, “Some 23.9 percent of
Americans polled from Aug. 23 through Sept. 16 said they strongly
supported or tended to support the idea of their state breaking
away.”

Interestingly, what many of the would-be splitters seem to be
hankering for is an equivalent of the promise that UK politicians
made to head off the secessionist vote in Scotland:
greater autonomy, with fewer top-down policy making and more
local decision-making.

“I don’t think it makes a whole lot of difference anymore which
political party is running things. Nothing gets done,” said Roy
Gustafson, 61, of Camden, South Carolina, who lives on disability
payments. “The state would be better off handling things on its
own.”

Respondents also said they resented Obamacare, federal meddling,
and what they see as a fumbling White House. They think their
states could do better. Once upon a time, we called that sort of
state-level decision-making “federalism”—back when we indulged such
a radical idea.

While more Republicans (29.7 percent) favor taking their states
out of the union compared with Democrats (21 percent), the results
were flipped just a few years ago. When
Zogby polled Americans in 2008 during the Bush Administration,
32 percent of mainline liberals said they agreed that states had
the right to leave the union, compared to 17 percent of mainline
conservatives.

It seems that a desire to flee the federal government comes hand
in hand with a forced feeding of unwelcome policies from on high.
Who could imagine?

Partisan positions on secession changed places from 2008 to
2014, but a specific desire to leave the union has risen from 18
percent to 23.9 percent. Those numbers may not be in spitting
distance of sparking a Scottish-style referendum anytime soon. But
it’s probably not too early to give some thought to that autonomy
talk.

It used to work pretty well.