The political divide in the United States might become more than just a battle on policy, as conservative areas in deep-blue states are talking about breaking off their borders, The Washington Times reported.
Oregon, Virginia, California, New York, and Illinois are five states whose rural areas are increasingly disenchanted with the liberal politics of their urban cities, according to the report.
"Oregon is controlled by the northwest portion of the state, Portland to Eugene," Move Oregon's Border for a Greater Idaho President Mike McCarter told the Times. "That's urban land, and their decisions are not really representing rural Oregon.
"They have their agenda and they're moving forward with it, and they're not listening to us."
The talk is similar to the "Vexit" of pro-gun Virginians on the border with West Virginia, which is ready to accept counties into its state that support the Second Amendment. West Virginia split off from Virginia in 1863, the last state to divide in the U.S.
"To be honest, if this works — you've got a lot of red areas in this country that are totally dominated by a blue metropolis," Vexit2020 leader Rick Boyer told the Times. "If it works in Virginia, there's no reason it can't reshape the political map."
There is a resolution in Illinois, introduced by GOP state Rep. Brad Halbrook, that will make Chicago the 51st state, because "downstate voices are simply not being heard because we've been forced into this democracy that's concentrated power into a small geographical area of the state."
Referencing the Supreme Court decision that ruled electoral districts must have equal populations, Halbrook said "the major metropolitan areas, the large population centers, are going to control the rest of the state, and that's what's happened with Illinois, California, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, New York," Halbrook told the Times.
Divide New York State is championing their self-governing regions, while New California wants to become its own state and Calexit seeks to become its own nation, the Times noted.
Oregon's rural breakaway plan would merely move three counties into Idaho.
"This proposal is different from secession because it is simply a shift in borders that does not affect the balance of power in the US Senate," according to Greater Idaho's petition, the Times reported. "It does not create a new state or increase the number of states."
Idaho's GOP Gov. Brad Little in on board.
"They'd like to have a little more autonomy and a little more control and a little more freedom, and I fully understand that," Little told Fox News' "Fox & Friends."
All of the plans are considered longshots, particularly by liberal leadership that does not want to shrink their states.
"The demographics in Virginia are not good," Boyer told the Times. "The federal government employee base is more and more of our voting population in Virginia every year. Northern Virginia is more and more dominant every year, and the giant rest of red Virginia is overwhelmed by blue Northern Virginia.
"It's a losing demographic war as Virginia is currently constituted."
But conservatives argue liberal leaders can add voting power in their blue states, by unloading their "deplorables," according to West Virginia GOP state Rep. Gary Howell to the Times.
"If they get rid of the ones that are supposedly their problem, they could have a super-majority with what's left in their legislature," Howell told the Times. "So they could pass the liberal utopia that they want."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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