Marjorie Taylor Greene calls for a national divorce between Republican and Democratic states

Ms Greene hails from Georgia, a state that once tried to implement a ‘national divorce’ so wealthy Georgians could keep owning Black people as slaves

(REUTERS)

Republican Representative Majorie Taylor Greene has suggested Americans who move from states where voters have chosen to elect Democrats should be denied the right to vote if they move to Republican-leaning states as part of a “national divorce” that would provide for the breakup of the United States.

Ms Greene, whose home state of Georgia once unsuccessfully tried to secede from the US so wealthy Georgians could continue to own Black people as slaves, made the incendiary suggestion on Wednesday in a tweet responding to a separate comment suggesting that “transplants” from so-called blue states should be “actively discriminat[ed]” against by GOP state governments through legislation denying them the right to vote “for a period” and requiring them to pay a tax for the “sin” of having lived in an area where voters prefer to elect Democrats to office.

“All possible in a National Divorce scenario,” Ms Greene wrote, using a term which has been employed by some on the political right who have advocated for fighting a second American civil war to prevent Democrats from ever holding high office in the US again.

Ms Greene added that it would be “wise” to prevent “Democrat voters” from “ruining” a “great state like Florida”.

“Brainwashed people that move from CA and NY really need a cooling off period,” she said.

Earlier this year, The Washington Post reported that a member of a Central Intelligence Agency advisory panel that monitors political instability abroad, University of California San Diego professor Barbara Walter, has found that the US is “closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe”.

In her forthcoming book, How Civil Wars Start, Ms Walter wrote that the US has “entered very dangerous territory” since 6 January 2020, when a mob of former President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol in hopes of preventing Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s electoral college win.

According to the Post, Ms Walter has found that the US could “easily be pushed toward conflict through a combination of bad governance and increasingly undemocratic measures that further weaken its institutions”.

A recent survey by Bright Line Watch found that 17 percent of self-identified Republicans would support using violence to restore Mr Trump to power, while 39 percent favour the GOP using any means necessary to prevent Democratic officials such as Mr Biden from governing effectively.