factcheck.org

The Obama team falsely suggests Texas Gov. Rick Perry advocated secession. Perry’s actual remarks have been mischaracterized. Perry entertained a reporter’s question about secession after a tea party rally in 2009, and warned that “if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what may come out of that?” But he’s made clear all along that “we’ve got a great union” and there is “no reason to dissolve it.”

Perry has carelessly commented that Texas has a unique right to secede from the union, having once been an independent republic. That’s a myth, historians say.

But Perry never advocated secession.