Daniel Miller spent this week’s Late Night Coffee Talk doing two things at once. He delivered hard news about where the campaign stands, and he drew a hard line about who is actually carrying it. The headline development: the TNM has scheduled a virtual gubernatorial town hall for November 7. Invitations went out Monday morning, Lieutenant Colonel Allen West accepted almost immediately, and Greg Abbott’s office declined just as fast. Don Huffines and Chad Prather had not responded by airtime. Miller said the date was set far enough out that no candidate could claim a scheduling conflict, so a decline reads as a decline. The format will run a live, moderated Q and A through a separate feed, and it will cover property taxes, consumption taxes, the February freeze, ERCOT, and wind subsidies alongside the independence question.
On the petition, Miller pushed back on a complaint that headquarters needed to move faster. Signatures are being verified by hand, two rooms over from where he was sitting, under Texas Election Code 172.088. He stressed that this is a real legal petition, not an online form like a White House or Change.org page, and that a verified count had not been released yet. The standing goal is a thousand certified petition circulators, and he argued that hitting it sooner is the whole point.
Then he got medieval, his own word for it. Citing the chapter of his book on what holds independence movements back, he named atomization, political amateurism, apathy, and naivete as the real obstacles, not opinions but documented factors. His challenge was blunt. People who profess to support independence but spend their time complaining instead of working are part of the problem, and the people busting their tails collecting signatures are the ones who will win it. On strategy he was just as direct: the movement is not trying to convince anyone right now, it is finding the already convinced and organizing them into the numbers that force a vote TNM believes it wins.
Questions answered in this episode
- Where do the Republican gubernatorial candidates stand on TEXIT, and who agreed to the town hall?
- What happens to people living on Social Security if Texas becomes independent?
- Could an independent Texas be easily taken over, and should conservative states form a new union instead?
- What would Texas call its military, and what does it have now?
- Is the petition something you can sign online, and how is it actually counted?
- Is Texas really the ninth largest economy in the world?
- What should supporters do if Congress passes HR1 and federalizes elections?
- What is the best argument to convince a Democrat that Texas needs independence?
- How large is the TNM compared with other independence movements worldwide?
- Does Daniel Miller personally attend every rally?
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