Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Gov. Rick Perry should be ashamed.

To even discuss, as Perry did Wednesday at a Tax Day rally in Austin, that Texans just might consider seceding from the United States, is a shameful act by our governor.

Legendary Sam Houston, the first elected president of the Republic of Texas, fell on his political sword in 1861 rather than secede from the union that Texas had joined in 1845.

He correctly predicted that the Confederacy was doomed and that Texas would suffer deeply by joining it.

Rick Perry is no Sam Houston, and we never expected him to be. Nor would we imply that he disrespects that legendary leader. Anyone who has walked through the Governor’s Mansion with Perry (before it burned last year) knows that he has obvious pride in his state and its heroes.

But Perry has at least two significant flaws: Sometimes he talks before he thinks, and he has a penchant for explosive remarks aimed at enhancing his own political profile.

On Wednesday, he sank to a new low. The Associated Press reported that in answering a reporter’s question, he suggested that Texans might at some point get so fed up they would want to secede from the union. Perry stressed later in an interview with the Star-Telegram that he never specifically said the state should consider doing so.

For the governor to even talk about secession can do real damage to Texas.

As diligently as Perry has pursued the cause of bringing new businesses and jobs to the state — and he deserves credit for that — how could he not think before making such an alarming statement? What business would consider locating a major facility in a state where the governor talks about breaking away from the United States, no matter how obliquely?

As a political bombshell, this one causes too much collateral damage.

Yes, Perry faces the prospect of a very difficult re-election battle in 2010, particularly if U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison runs against him.

He may have been trying to paint her as part of the Washington, D.C., crowd that has spent too much money and approved too many taxes. That’s a legitimate political ploy, but his execution of it was seriously flawed.

This gaffe cannot and should not do anything but damage Perry. An elected official who says such things should suffer politically.

The question now is whether the governor can reverse course well enough to keep his undisciplined mouth from hurting Texas.

There is good reason to wonder about that, and there is good reason to wonder about him.