Secession?

USATODAY.com

This county by county rundown of the vote shows why the secession talk by people like Lawrence o"Donnell and others is so much smoke. O'Donnell for one made the case that the red states are net consumers of government services they did not pay a proportionate share of in the first place. He uses states because that is the only way he can make this case. The counties make it look a whole lot different. Maybe we should analyze county by county to figure out if they are net consumers of services they didn't pay for? (The vote by 51% of the people does not make the case either.)

And why is it that only states seceding in this talk is so sacrosanct? State's rights? So liberalism has something in common with the Southern states of the Confederacy after all? States have a right to determine their status in the United States? And what about federalism being the antidote to bubba--a product of generations of in-breeding they sneer--in the countryside who wants to discriminate against everyone who does not look and act like him? "Oh, we'll get rid of him and his'n by refiguring what the United States is." But they'll do that by basically giving a right of nullification to the states. Sounds like a reversal of decades and decades of liberal policy. Henry Clay, liberal democrat? Who'd a thunk?

This map makes the secession talk a lot more interesting.

UPDATE: I am a little slow linking to it but the guys at Powerline have a good post on this here.

UPDATE UPDATE: More conservative analysis of secession here. (Tough talk on reconstruction of the blue states afterward.)