Cruz­ing to vic­tory. Photo: AP/​Houston Chron­i­cle, Johnny Hanson

Texas has always been different.

As Tex­ans are fond of telling out­siders (even them­selves), it’s the only part of the United States that was once a sov­er­eign nation. That’s the basis for the Governor’s Office of Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment and Tourism’s slo­gan, “It’s Like a Whole Other Coun­try”. Texas insur­gent forces won inde­pen­dence for Texas on the bat­tle­field in 1835 and 1836. Texas was a Repub­lic from 1836 until it joined the United States in 1845. Texas then seceded from the Union along with the other Con­fed­er­ate States of Amer­ica in 1861, and rejoined the United States with the South’s defeat in 1865.

There is a gen­eral belief amongst most Tex­ans that some sort of spe­cial “get out of the Union free” Easter Egg was implanted in the doc­u­ments that joined Texas to the United States. How­ever, not even the Texas Secede! web­site believes such a thing: “No such pro­vi­sion is found in the cur­rent Texas Con­sti­tu­tion (adopted in 1876) or the terms of annexation.”

Texas estab­lished one more dif­fer­ence between itself and the rest of the Union on Tues­day: in an elec­tion cycle when the Tea Party has been declared dead and buried, Tex­ans showed that, in Faulkner’s words, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” They advanced for­mer state Solic­i­tor Gen­eral Ted Cruz as the Repub­li­can can­di­date in the gen­eral elec­tion, where he should cruise to an easy vic­tory over Demo­c­ra­tic nom­i­nee Paul Sadler. (more…)