With the eruption of Secessionist rhetoric, the chickens of the "Southern Strategy" have come home to roost.
Secession is the entirely predictable endpoint to US "conservatism's" political and judicial logic. Strict constructionism and the fetish of original intent both lead inevitably to a pre-1860 view of the constitution. While some on the right may cynically wish to limit the reach of these doctrines to specific areas of advantage, regulation, etc., the true believers perceive that they ultimately lead to the liquidation of Federal authority.
What's been little understood is that the vision of the US embraced by the right wing is one both alien and hostile to the general trend of US governance since 1860. It harks back to slavery era conceptions of the Federal government as a mere factotum of the states. In actual historic practice, the factotum of the slave states (see Dred Scott).
There's no avoiding this position if you want to argue, as the right has, that everything from regulation to enforcement of civil rights amounts to Federal usurpation of state sovreignity.
Such arguments can only be sustained if one denies the historic legitimacy of the outcome of the civil war. That conflict established principles which are anathema to US "conservatism". Among others, that Federal authority may be enforced in individual states by military means and that such authority extends to determining the internal political structure of the states as well as securing the liberties guaranteed to citizens by the bill of rights and other amendments.
Moreover, the civil war established that, in certain circumstances, the Federal government has the power to defacto expropriate millions of dollars in property without compensation. We tend to overlook the fact that slaves represented the vast majority of the south's economic wealth. With emancipation this wealth and the economic power it bestowed evaporated.
In short, the civil war was the most titanic instance of social engineering, perhaps social revolution, in US history.
This is a lump of reality that the reactionaries who pass themselves off as conservatives find impossible to digest. For them it is necessary to either ignore or delegitimize the constitutional legacy of the civil war. The latter can only be accomplished if one asserts that the secessionists were right and the unionists were wrong. That the seceding states had every right to leave and that the war for the union was the premier example of Federal usurpation.
The inherent extremism of this line of argument is clear. That it has at last been openly mouthed by Republican officials and their media cohorts marks a watershed in the reactionary degeneration of US conservatism dating to the reaproachment between its corporate and southern populist wings. A reaproachment spearheaded by The National Review in the late 1950's.
The propaganda value of this species of "anti-federalism" to corporate interests is evident. They have been willing to underwrite it as a tool for blunting, if not eliminating, government regulation.
The true believers in contrast, are fundamentalist. They've taken the propaganda literally.
It would seem that the two wings have come to a parting of the ways. As the current economic crisis amply illustrates, the corporate elite still relies on the Government as the ultimate guarantor of market stability and liquidity. It can't do this while simultaneously joining the true believers in their backwards march to a confederate Zion.
From a corporate perspective, this business of secession can only be bad for business.
The incipient split between the corporate and southern populist wings of the GOP is far more profound and omnious than the earlier split between its libertarian and evangelical wings. On the one hand, it weakens the overtly reactionary southern populist wing by depriving it of a powerful alliance. On the other, it removes it from all restraining influence, opening the field to exploitation by every variety of demagogue. We shouldn't allow the comic opera aspect of their current dilemma to obscure this.
To get some idea of where this all might lead, one need only consult the history of "Massive Resistance" to desegregation in the southern states. This was the last period when southern fried reaction got the bit between its teeth. Those who pander to this sort of politics are sowing the wind.
Comic opera politics have led to extremely nasty consequences in the past.