Calexit, the desire of some in California secede from the Union, has acquired a strange ally in the form of State Rep. Paul Ray, a Republican in Utah. State Rep. Ray is drafting legislation that would support California secession. The resolution has little chance of passing and, in many quarters, is considered a joke. However, the proposed law does reveal a dirty little secret concerning the secession drive in California.
Why would some conservatives want California to go in peace?
A lot of conservatives have wondered for a long time whether California is run by crazy people, addicted to high taxes, crushing regulations, and out of control spending.
On a more political level, the state’s electoral votes and is Congressional delegation has been reliably Democratic for over a quarter of a century.
Then, too, the craziness of the Calexit movement was laid bare when one of its leaders admitted that he would be pleased to see California’s middle class leave the state to make room for immigrants. What such a process would do for the economy of America’s most populous state can only be imagined.
Rep. Ray is doubtless expressing the frustration of many people at the pretensions exhibited by California’s business and political elite. The attitude being voiced by the proposed Utah resolution can be summed up with the pithy phrase, “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
What happens after Calexit?
Of course, largely unstated is the expectation of disaster to follow any successful Calexit.
One likely development would be an attempt of the more conservative eastern part of California to secede from the new nation and rejoin the Union, much like West Virginia did from Virginia during the 1860s.
Then things get more interesting. The Republic of California, now consisting of a populous strip along the Pacific Coast, becomes a developing world nation with a few Silicon Valley and Hollywood billionaires on top and a mass of poor, low skilled immigrants on the bottom.
The middle class, under the desire of that Calexit leader, become refugees.
The economy of the California Republic rapidly tanks, with shortages of essential goods, electricity blackouts, and water outages. Eventually, the new nation becomes Venezuela, The people rise, overthrow the government, and beg to be readmitted to the United States.
California rejoins the Union as a territory and, after the humanitarian crisis that secession wrought is addressed, is organized into two states, north around San Francisco and south around Los Angeles, with new leadership that has learned the lesson of the terrible folly of the current government.
