Sentiment Is Not Victory: Daniel Miller on the 66 Percent and the Work Nobody Wants to Do

After two or three weeks off the air for a road swing across Texas, Daniel Miller came back to the camera with a single argument running underneath every answer. The Texas Nationalist Movement is winning the argument and losing nothing on sentiment, but sentiment is not the win. He walked through a SurveyUSA poll from early July that found 66 percent of likely Texas voters would vote Texas out if independence were on the ballot. The crosstabs were the real story. Republican support sat at 73 percent, Democrats at 54, independents at 53. He read those Democrat numbers as the place Republicans stood back in the 2014 Reuters Ipsos poll. The center of gravity has moved, and it keeps moving.

His point was that a majority that only nods along is not enough. All political power is inherent in the people, so the only way to win Texas is to win the people and then organize them into something binding. That means forcing a free, fair, full referendum onto a ballot, not waiting for one. He had no patience for the online voices complaining the fight goes too slowly. He pointed to a documentary on Gene Sharp called How to Start a Revolution and to Srdja Popovic, who helped topple Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia after ten years of groundwork and five major campaigns. Nobody harvests without working the field. His own line in the sand was crossed on August 24, 1996, and he marked the 26th anniversary of it on this trip.

The recap from the road carried the same message. Packed rooms in Bowie County, a Catalyst Campaign screening of The Adventures of the Republic in Tyler, a standing-room joint meeting of We the People groups at a distillery in Dripping Springs where Colonel Phil Waldron backed the movement’s answers from a military angle, and a full house in Round Rock where diners abandoned their tables to come listen. Miller pushed the organizing ask hard. The goal is a thousand local groups by the end of next year, the November 2023 legislative session is the target, and the pre-filing clock starts two weeks after the general election. Now is the time to start, he said, not when the session arrives.

Questions answered in this episode

• Will the United States eventually break apart the way the Soviet Union did?
• Will TNM run a Texas independence radio commercial to spread the word?
• Would Daniel sit for an interview with hosts like Dave Smith or Michael Malice?
• If an old petition signature no longer counts, how does someone register their support now?
• Is there a plan to put all of Texas on a single power grid?
• Could an independent Texas adopt a precious-metal currency backed by silver?
• How worried should the movement be about federal or FBI infiltration, and what safeguards screen out bad actors?
• If Washington refuses a mutual defense pact, could Texas join NATO under its open-door policy?
• Would an independent Texas keep using the U.S. dollar, and how would it settle its share of the federal debt?
• How realistic is getting a Texit vote onto the ballot within the next two or three election cycles?
• Is Governor Abbott’s busing of migrants to other cities smuggling, a violation of party priorities, or just deportation?
• What happens to Social Security, Medicare, and federal pension benefits after independence?
• Will an independent Texas have its own bill of rights and constitutional amendments?
• Would Texans hold dual citizenship or have to renounce their U.S. citizenship?
• Would Texas, Our Texas become the national anthem after independence?
• How does the movement win over the socialist-leaning politics of the big metro areas?
• Would Texas keep the Texas Rangers in their current role?
• How does an independent Texas keep the World Economic Forum and U.N. Agenda 21 out?
• Will Texas House committee chairmanships again be handed to Democrats this session?