Secession and conservatives, or we can't get our own way so we want our own state

Again a rural county wants their own state. The Siskiyou County Board in northern California voted 4 to 1 to secede and form a new state. You can read it here or here.

This follows some rural counties on the great plains in Colorado wanting their own state. You can read some articles here or here or here.

The complaint is that they can't get their way in legislative affairs and that their opinions aren't privileged over the opinions of other people in their state. So they want their own state.

It is not likely that they will get their way on this. The original state has to approve and Congress has to admit a new state. These rural areas have very few people and I doubt that congress is going to want to give them two senators to represent a very small group of people whose reason is that they don't have some special legislative privilege.

It seems that this secession idea for sparsely settled rural counties of a state might be spreading. If it does it poses a real risk to conservatives and Republicans.

For the conservative movement it makes them look crazy. The rest of the people in the state have participated in the elections and accepted the results and they certainly won't look favorably on secessionists who will come across as being spoiled and having a tantrum because they can't get their own way.

For Republicans it holds real risks. When a Republican pursues a statewide office the question will arise how to respond to the secessionists. If the secessionists are rejected they may not vote for the Republican candidate or vote for a third party candidate and so might some right wing individuals sympathizing with the secessionists thus helping to elect a Democrat to state wide office. If instead the Republican politician attempts to pander to the secessionists, he or she will seem silly, and against the state, and will bring the Republican party into ridicule as well as each Republican running for any office in the state who will be likely asked for their opinion on secession.

Since it would be congress that admits states, Republicans running for federal elected office could also be questioned and not just in the states with secessionists movements.

I don't think that this idea will be necessary confined to states with Democratic legislatures and somewhat isolated rural counties with very conservative populations. Perhaps there just needs to be a divide between a state majority that isn't as conservative as some rural county in that state.

Right now the media is covering this for laughs and novelty. However, the Republicans need to ask what the impact might be on the 2014 and 2016 elections.