Uh, good luck with that.
During former Trump strategist Steve Bannon’s podcast last Friday, Wyoming GOP Chair Frank Eathorne signaled approval of a Texas Republican lawmaker’s push for the Lone Star State to secede from the Union in a “Texit.”
“Many of these Western states have the ability to be self-reliant, and we’re keeping eyes on Texas too, and their consideration of possible secession,” Eathorne told Bannon. “They have a different state constitution than we do as far as wording, but it’s something we’re all paying attention to.”
The party leader told the Star-Tribune that the subject came up in a “brief conversation” with the Texas GOP but it “won’t come up again unless the grass roots brings it up.”
A Republican state legislator, Rep. Landon Brown (R), panned Eathorne’s “pathetic” suggestion and called for the chair’s resignation in a blunt tweet on Tuesday.
“Floating the idea of secession as a party plank or statement is contradictory to my stance as a Republican,” Brown stated. “This idea is pathetic and ill advised – I am appalled that our chairman thinks he has this authority.”
Ill advised indeed.
For starters, the U.S. federal government owns almost half of Wyoming’s land.
Additionally, the Cowboy State depends heavily on Uncle Sam’s pursestrings: Federal funds have accounted for 33.5 to 48 percent of the Cowboy State’s revenue throughout the past two decades, according to the Star Tribune.
All that plus a paltry GDP of $40.4 billion makes any “Wyexit” a flatly terrible idea. If Wyoming were a country, its GDP would rank between Paraguay and Tunisia
