Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Just Wrong About a National Divorce

More Federalism, Not a National Divorce, Is What America Needs

From a Tweet Thread I Posted Yesterday Morning (@ohiomatt):

I know some on the Right are fans of Georgia Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, but her statement that America needs to divide itself between Red states and Blue states is just moronic and does little other then make the Right look ridiculous. Here's why: (1) America's voting populations are not nicely segmented by Red or Blue states; rather, voters are segmented by urban-suburban versus suburban-rural areas, as the county map below of the 2020 election shows. Every state has urban centers with Blue voters and rural areas with Red voters. Does MTG want to ship Blue voters to Blue states? What about Red voters in Blue states--are they getting shipped to Red states?

(2) How does MTG propose to connect Blue states on west and east coasts? Just look at how hard it is for Israel to deal with two disconnected Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

(3) How does MTG want to deal with her home state of Georgia, which is currently Blue by POTUS/U..S Senate votes, but Red by statewide elected officials votes? Or Arizona? Or Wisconsin? Or Pennsylvania? Or Nevada? Or Michigan?

(4) Aren't Americans already voting with their feet by moving from states with bad policies (NY; IL; and CA) to states with good policies (FL; TX; and SC), thereby decreasing over time the electoral power of Blue states and increasing the electoral power of Red states, which will help the Right win federal elections more consistently in the coming decades. See my population and political power report from this past summer, with maps and data below. This trend highlights the power of competitive federalism (i.e., the 10th Amendment) in shaping America.

(5) Finally, in addition to competitive federalism, it seems to me the better approach is allowing parts of states via voter approval to become part of another state like we are seeing in eastern Oregon, which is seeking to join Idaho, and in western Maryland, which is seeking to join West Virginia. Or perhaps fostering movements like in eastern California to become its own state. All of these "reshaping" movements are unlikely to happen, but at least such movements are pushed by voters locally driven by local issues, not politicians in DC driven by gaining more political power in DC.

For details on how competitive federalism can reinvigorate America and spur a true environment in which the fifty laboratories of competition compete on policies to see what works and what doesn't, see my nearly ten year old report "Leveraging the Constitution to Rebuild America."

This is just my two cents—though David Harsanyi at The Federalist wrote a very similar piece, “We Don’t Need a ‘National Divorce,’ We Need More Federalism,” a few hour after my Twitter thread, so I’m not the only one who thinks MTG is far off the mark.