It’s official: Texas is America’s least favorite state.
So declares an online poll conducted by Business Insider and their polling partner, Survey Monkey Audience. The poll asks people to rate the states on various categories, including rudest (New York), smartest (Massachusetts), hottest residents (California) and drunkest (Louisiana). Asked to name the state they’d most like to kick out of the union, a plurality picked Texas.
Now, Texans could get all offended by this, but for one thing: They agree! Last year, 80,000 of them signed an online White House petition asking to leave the union. The petition came a few years after the lone star state’s governor, fired up by the excitement of the first Tea Party protests, suggested his state could exit the country if the Obama administration didn’t change its ways. That same year, he told a group of tech bloggers that “we can leave any time we want. So we’re kind of thinking about that again.”
All of this makes you wonder: Why did Perry disown this idea during his ill-fated 2012 presidential campaign? Instead of running a campaign best remembered for a homophobic ad and an epic debate fail, he could have toured the country promising one single thing: That Texas would be gone on Day One. Texans and non-Texans alike could have agreed. And, even under the bright lights of a TV debate, Perry could have remembered the plank.