Archive for the ‘Tea Party’ Category

Clearwater native runs one of Tallahassees leading communication strategy shops – Tampa Bay Times

In the spring of 2009, Dosal Tobacco was feeling heat from state lawmakers. The Miami cigarette company founded by Cuban immigrants had built a thriving business around its 305s and other low-cost brands of smokes. But rivals claimed Dosal had an unfair advantage because it wasnt part of an $11.3-billion settlement struck between the state and large tobacco companies in 1997 to cover smoking-related health costs and House leaders were pushing for a 40- cent per pack assessment on Dosals cigarettes to plug a hole in the state budget.

Worried that a surcharge could cripple its business, Dosal hired more than a dozen Tallahassee lobbyists and Sarah Bascom, a former GOP communications aide who had just opened her own public relations and media consulting shop. Bascom advised the company to shut its plant for a day or so and bus 200 employees up to Tallahassee to confront lawmakers. She had Save Dosal T-shirts made and less than 48 hours later marched all of them into the Capitol to explain the impact of taxing one company, Bascom recalls.

The demonstration grabbed headlines and caught the attention of thenGov. Charlie Crist, who threatened to veto the legislation. House leaders backed away from the plan after meeting with the Dosal employees. It was probably one of the biggest battles we had high-profile, full-contact sport from the very beginning and up against very large companies, Bascom says. We were fighting Philip Morris, RJR and Liggett on behalf of this company.

A decade later, Dosal remains a loyal client, and Bascom Communications and Consulting has come to be regarded as one of Tallahassees leading communication strategy shops. Though the firm is not the biggest by revenue or staff, Bascoms aggressive advocacy and strong GOP connections have earned the firm a seat at the table in some of Floridas biggest policy battles and shes often the first consultant other Republican lobbyists call when they need an effective messenger.

Bascom also gets kudos from clients for her integrity she doesnt jump sides on issues and her inclination to stay out of the spotlight. People in the communications world, they too often want to become the story. They want to be the one at the megaphone, says client Rep. Chris Sprowls. Shes never angling for self-promotion.

A Clearwater native, Bascom, 45, got into politics in the late 1990s after earning a communications degree from Florida State University. The daughter of two teachers, she had contemplated a career as a news reporter but changed her mind during an internship with News Channel 8 in Tampa, when she realized she was more intrigued by the work that Jeb Bushs campaign press team was doing than by the political reporter she was following around. I just started to notice there was this whole different career in political campaign communications, she says.

She cut her political teeth as a communications assistant at the Republican Party of Florida headquarters in June 1999. More than a year later, she got the 4 a.m.-to-2 p.m. shift doing press clips and answering phones when George W. Bushs re-count committee swept in and took over the partys headquarters following the too-close-to-call 2000 presidential election.

After Bushs razor-thin victory over Al Gore, some of Bascoms colleagues left Florida for jobs on Capitol Hill. She stayed in Tallahassee and signed on as press secretary for then incoming Senate majority leader Jim King, a Jacksonville Republican who would become Senate president.

King kept her busy. He had a penchant for sometimes going off-script at press conferences, a trait that helped Bascom hone her crisis communication skills. He would say anything wasnt even certain if the numbers were correct and he would rattle off budget numbers and just look at you, and I would look at him and say, Thats not correct, and hed say Its fine, " Bascom recalls, with a chuckle. One time, I kicked the camera cord out of the wall to stop a live feed because he was saying things you cant say on live TV, declining to be more specific.

Bascom ventured into the public affairs arena in 2004 and two years later, D.C.- based political consultants Mike Murphy and Todd Harris tapped her to open a Tallahassee outpost for their Navigators lobbying and communications firm. Within six months, she hit the million-dollar mark with client billings and became a partner in the all-Republican firm. In 2009, as Navigators adopted a more bipartisan business route Democrats controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress at the time Bascom decided to cash out her retirement account and start her own shop. Its no secret Im a Republican consultant, she says.

Bascom says the household where she grew up wasnt very politically active, but her family was politically astute and kept up with current events. I knew I was Republican based on what our views were and what I aligned with even at a young age, she says. She isnt the only one in her family involved in politics. Her cousin, David Jolly, went to work for U.S. Rep. Bill Young, the longtime Republican representative of St. Petersburg and Clearwater, and eventually ran for office himself. We were close growing up, she says.

While she only works for Republicans, Bascom says she wont take on just any client. She recalls a strange conversation with one group several years back that was angling to have manatees removed from the states endangered species list. She took a pass on that one. (Manatees were reclassified as a threatened species in 2006.) On occasion, she quit working for campaigns when she discovered the candidates werent giving her accurate information. We dont work for or against things unless we believe in them, she says. We wont just take a client to take a client.

Bascoms firm, which does a mix of PR and political campaign work, represents various business and trade groups, including AT&T, Florida Power & Light and the Florida Association of Health Plans. On the campaign front, Bascom Communications billed more than $742,000 during the 2016, 2018 and 2020 election cycles combined as of early July, according to state campaign finance records, and was called into help run Ron DeSantis campaign PR after he clinched the GOP gubernatorial primary in 2018.

Bascoms political clients have included her cousin Jolly, a former congressman who left the GOP in 2018 to become an independent and state legislative leaders, including outgoing Senate President Bill Galvano and Sprowls, the incoming House Speaker. Galvano says she helped him message on many important objectives, including the Multi-use Corridors of Regional Economic Significance (MCORES) program, which authorized the building of more than 300 miles of toll roads, broadband infrastructure and sewer hookups through many rural parts of the state. Sprowls says he relies on Bascom as a sounding board.

Sen. Aaron Bean credits Bascom with getting him through a dark time in my political world when he was accused in 2017 of misusing his office to secure a $1-million appropriation for a mental health screening program run by friends and political supporters. The Fernandina Beach Republican was eventually cleared of wrongdoing by the Florida Commission on Ethics.

I was accused of doing things that I didnt do. Its a scary place to be when you feel alone and reporters are making accusations and theyre writing bad stories about you, Bean recalls. He says Bascom shepherded him through the process, guiding him on what to say and who to talk to as well as what not to say and who not to talk to. Its easy to talk about your campaign when everythings going your way but she specializes when theres storm clouds out there, how to get back to safe harbor, he says.

Bascom says crisis management comes with the territory. I think that we are by nature, because of our political background, calm operators. A crisis doesnt really freak us out that much because were used to having to eat the elephant for that one point in time.

Today, Bascom oversees four other consultants all veteran GOP operatives who stay busy crafting strategy and messages for some of the most hotly contested legislative battles in Florida. This past session, the firm spearheaded communication for the Sadowski Coalition, which earlier this year garnered full funding ($370 million) from the Legislature for the states affordable housing trust fund. It was the first time in more than a decade that lawmakers didnt raid the trust fund for other purposes, but DeSantis vetoed $225 million of the allocation in June. Bascoms team also crafted outside messaging for the successful effort to expand the scope of practice for nurse practitioners and pharmacists in Florida a key priority of Republican House Speaker Jose Oliva. The Florida Medical Association had fiercely opposed the move for decades.

ABC Fine Wine & Spirits is another longtime client. Over the years, Bascom has helped the Orlando-based company and allies like Lakeland-based Publix fight efforts by Target and Walmart to repeal a Depression-era law that requires hard liquor to be sold in space separate from groceries and other products. The liquor wall battle reached a fevered pitch in 2017, when lawmakers passed the so-called whiskey and Wheaties bill that would have allowed retailers to install doors in the walls that separate some retailers from liquor stores. ThenGov. Rick Scott vetoed it.

Bascom has also done business fighting for or against various ballot measures to amend Floridas constitution. In 2014, she was the spokesperson for Vote No on 2 Campaign, an effort to defeat a constitutional amendment to legalize marijuana. She says she wasnt opposed to medical marijuana, but the way the amendment was written made it a Trojan horse that would have allowed for recreational marijuana as well. It fell short of the 60% threshold by 2.5 percentage points.

Bascom declined to fight a revamped version of the amendment in 2016 because the new amendment fixed what we would publicly say against it, she says. (With backing from trial lawyer John Morgan, it passed with 70% of the vote). But at the time she was also engaged with one of the years ugliest referendum battles dueling constitutional amendments over the future of rooftop solar in the Sunshine State.

On one side, a group called Floridians for Solar Choice backed by an unusual alliance of rooftop solar companies, environmental groups, Tea Party activists and the League of Women Voters, among others was pushing an amendment that would have allowed Floridians to buy power directly from third-party solar providers. Bascom, meanwhile, was plugging for Consumers for Smart Solar, a $25.6-million, utility-backed campaign to try to kill off the so-called Solar Choice amendment with a different amendment. The proposal would have enshrined in the constitution the right of rooftop solar owners to generate electricity for personal use but it would have left intact regulatory structures that give utilities a monopoly over power sales.

In the end, both initiatives shortcircuited. Floridians for Solar Choice failed to gather enough signatures to even make the ballot and Bascom was thrown into damage control mode when recordings surfaced in the media of a James Madison Institute staffer calling the Smart Solar amendment a political jiu jitsu and savvy maneuver that would completely negate anything they (pro-solar) interests would try to do either legislatively or constitutionally down the road. On Election Day, the Smart Solar amendment fell about 9 points short of the 60% supermajority needed to become law.

Heading into the 2020 elections, Bascom is serving as the spokesperson for Keep Our Constitution Clean, spearheading an amendment that would make it harder to pass future constitutional amendments by requiring they be approved twice by voters. Little is known about the organization, which was set up by three attorneys with the Fort Lauderdale-based law firm Haber Blank. The group has raised $9 million from a separate non-profit that doesnt have to disclose its donors and Bascoms been close-lipped about the group. We operate under the current system and the legal structure. What you are questioning is the structure. We did not design the structure, she recently told a Tampa Bay Times reporter.

Clients say Bascom plays the political game for the long haul and appreciate her loyalty. When youre just a hired gun, so to speak, people treat you that way. When youve done what Sarah has done, which is build a brand, a reputation (its different), says Sprowls. She stays loyal to her clients; she stays loyal to the side of the issues shes on, and I think people value that because they know what theyre going to get.

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Clearwater native runs one of Tallahassees leading communication strategy shops - Tampa Bay Times

Team Trump assails Phony Kamala, while privately acknowledging her appeal – POLITICO

The Republican National Committee, which compiled information on all possible candidates, released a lengthy research document titled Radical Kamala Harris Gives Democrats The Most Extreme Ticket In History.

She is extreme, said Sean Spicer, Trumps first press secretary who remains close to the White House. She could alienate anybody thats not on the far left.

Republicans criticized Harris for supporting the Green New Deal climate change plan and voting against the vast majority of Trumps judicial nominees, including his Supreme Court picks. Tea Party Patriots Action called her a reliable vote for higher taxes, bigger government, and less freedom for individuals.

This has completed the leftist takeover of the party and of their radical agenda, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said on a call with reporters. Kamala Harris will be the most liberal leftist nominee for VP that our country has ever seen.

Trump on Tuesday described Harris as his No. 1 choice for Bidens running mate, weeks after saying, I think shed be a fine choice.

But he and his aides focused their line of attack through the same lens theyve used on other potential running mates, perhaps indicating after months of research on Harris they dont have much else to criticize.

Many in Trumps orbit had hoped Biden would tap Susan Rice, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, whom they had thought could fire up his MAGA base. Despite their eagerness for her, Rice being selected likely wouldnt have helped Trump attract the independent voters his team has been trying to win over for years.

With less than three months until the election, Trump is lagging behind Biden in most national polls and battleground states. His standing has even fallen in traditionally red states as the coronavirus pandemic has dragged on.

Republicans, who have found little success in tarnishing Biden, will now try to damage Harris by describing her as a failed presidential candidate who didnt generate excitement in her own party. Most of Trumps attention on Harris during the Democratic primary was about her performance in the race, and he returned to that theme Tuesday at the White House to recall her poor showing in the campaign.

Privately, some Republicans acknowledged that Harris, the first Black female candidate on a major party ticket and daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, would help Biden win over women and people of color. She will be the first woman, first Black and first Asian American vice president if elected.

In a video to supporters and text messages to donors, the Trump campaign nicknamed Harris phony Kamala for criticizing Biden for his record on school integration during the Democratic primary but then agreeing to join his ticket. Biden picked Phony Kamala for VP: He isnt smart enough to see her lies, the campaign wrote in the text.

In addition to attacking her for being liberal, Republicans highlighted her record as a prosecutor which now appears out of step with the Democratic Party after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police though that could contradict their message that shes too soft on crime. Harris joined Black Lives Matter demonstrations this summer.

She is now trying to bury her egregious record as a prosecutor in order to appease the anti-police extremists that are now controlling the radicalized Democrat Party, Trump 2020 senior adviser Katrina Pierson told reporters Tuesday.

At a campaign event in Mesa, Ariz., on Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence welcomed Harris to the race to a round of boos.

"As you all know, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party have been overtaken by the radical left, he said. So given their promises of higher taxes, open borders, socialized medicine and abortion on demand, it's no surprise that he chose Sen. Harris.

Republicans are split on how Pence would fare against Harris in the vice presidential debate, scheduled for Oct. 7. at the University of Utah. Some say Harris would be tough to debate because of her prosecutor background which she deployed regularly for pointed questioning during Senate hearings but others say Pence would come across as more relatable.

She is a fierce questioner ... and is certainly an energetic candidate, a Republican Capitol Hill staffer said. It will make a tough contrast in debates against Pence for the Trump Team.

In 2011 and 2013, Trump donated twice to Harris for a total of $6,000. Ivanka Trump, a senior adviser to her father, also gave Harris $2,000 just six years ago.

When asked about the donations Tuesday, Pierson said they should prove once and for all that Trump is not racist.

I will note that Kamala Harris is a Black woman and he donated to her campaign so I hope we can squash this racism argument now, she said.

CORRECTION: Kamala Harris will be the first Black female on a major party ticket, but Barack Obama was the first Black person on a major party ticket.

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Team Trump assails Phony Kamala, while privately acknowledging her appeal - POLITICO

City treasurer and Tejeda unchallenged on the Nov. 3 ballot – Redlands News

Redlands City Councilman Eddie Tejeda and Treasurer Robert E. Dawes will face no opponents on the ballot in the Nov. 3 election.

Tejeda, who was elected to a four-year term on the council in 2016, represents District 2, which is between Tennessee and Church streets and from Citrus Avenue to the northern border of the city. Dawes, who was first elected in 2012, was also unchallenged four years ago.

Both names will be on the ballot, said Redlands City Clerk Jeanne Donaldson.

Four candidates qualified for council District 4, where Councilwoman Toni Momberger decided not to seek another term. They are Steve Frasher, vice chairman of the Planning Commission; Lane Schneider, founder of the Redlands Tea Party who led the campaign to defeat Measure G in March; Jenny Guzman-Lowery, who is training to become a marriage and family therapist; and Ivan Ramirez, an analyst with the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority.

District 4 is east of Church Street and west of Ford/Judson streets and between Pioneer Avenue and Sunset Drive.

There will be no council elections this year in districts 1, 3 and 5, where council elections are next scheduled in 2022.

City clerk and treasurer are elected citywide every four years. Donaldson has one challenger, Roy George, a real estate finance executive. The registrar of voters verified his nomination petition on Saturday.

The Redlands measure calling for a 1-cent sales tax increase doesnt have a letter designation. The designation and arguments for and against should available by the end of August.

For four years, the Redlands Unified School District has not had a representative for Area 3

Friday, Aug. 7, was the regular filing deadline for the Nov. 3 election, but the filing dead

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City treasurer and Tejeda unchallenged on the Nov. 3 ballot - Redlands News

Before You Go: New cases remain below 1,000; IOP will ease parking restrictions; Chs. GOP holding rally tonight – Charleston City Paper

COVID-19 update: DHEC announced 907 new cases of COVID-19 and 35 deaths connected to the virus on Thursday, the fourth-straight day with less than 1,000 new cases.

The percent positive rate was 15.7%.

As of 5:24 p.m. Aug. 13, via S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control:

Confirmed cases in S.C.:103,051(+907new cases since Tuesday)Positive tests in Charleston County (total): 12,598 (+76)Negative tests in S.C.: 729,395Deaths in S.C. from COVID-19: 2,057 (+35)

What we're reading:Vox: "Trump campaign attack on Kamala Harriss citizenship is right out of the birtherism playbook"

The Verge:Hans Zimmer created an extended version of Netflixs ta-dum sound for theaters

The New Yorker by Masha Gessen: "After a Rigged Election, Belarus Crushes Protests Amid an Information Blackout"

NYT: "Think QAnon Is on the Fringe? So Was the Tea Party"

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Before You Go: New cases remain below 1,000; IOP will ease parking restrictions; Chs. GOP holding rally tonight - Charleston City Paper

Past as Present? Geographical Polarization, Nationalism, and Secessionism in the US – The Globe Post

As a historian working on 19th-century US history projects over the past couple of years, I have read numerous scholarly books and articles on the last two decades of the Antebellum and subsequent Civil War. It soon dawned on me that at night I was watching news that mirrored what I was reading in the morning and afternoon.

Astonished by the historical parallels between the Antebellum and contemporary developments, I began writing a series of comparative essays. This is part 2. Read part 1 here.

In July, CDC director Robert Redfield blamed northerners who headed south for Memorial Day weekend vacations for the latest surge of COVID-19. Harvard scientists and New York Governor Mario Cuomo retorted that it was not the Norths fault, blaming instead the increase on southern politicians who decided to reopen their states too soon.

Likewise, states are divided on mandates about wearing or not wearing masks, roughly along the Mason-Dixon line, the same two sections which during the Antebellum and Civil War were bitterly and violently split over slavery, its expansion, and a few other interrelated socio-political matters.

Founding Father and fourth US President James Madison, with his extraordinary political wisdom and foresight, could not have anticipated that so many Americans would come to cherish the freedom to not wear a mask as almost worthy of inclusion in the hallowed Bill of Rights. No one would have conceived just three months ago, that such an issue would divide the nation to the extent that it has.

There is somewhat of a historical precedent, however. During the Spanish Flu pandemic (1918-1919), opponents of mask-wearing ordinances organized and marched in protest in many US cities.

Anyone barely familiar with the Reconstruction Era that followed the Civil War and its long conflictive aftermath knows that the peace signed at Appomattox, far from healing the wounds of division, aggravated sectional and interracial tensions. It also gave way to long decades of systematic exploitation of former slaves, their illegal disenfranchisement, segregation, and lynching.

Sectionalism in North America actually precedes the formation of the United States. It reflects the reality of a vast territory divided by latitude and climate, thus by different economic activities, and hence by divergent economic interests, labor systems, domestic policy objectives, and even foreign policy.

The Antebellum South was geographically suited for producing tropical and semitropical staples such as tobacco, rice, cotton, and sugar, which many landowners believed required enslaved labor. While the North imported part of that production, much of it headed toward European markets, resulting in southern politicians insistence on friendly relations with Europe and keeping tariffs as low as possible.

Contrastingly, since colonial times, the northern economy focused on temperate climate agricultural activities, commerce, navigation, and manufacturing, a system that thrived on high, protectionist tariffs and did not depend on slave labor.

Historians have long recognized southern secessionism as a form of nationalism, whereby many white southerners viewed themselves as constituting a different nation with its own distinct culture, and therefore deserving of political autonomy, if not independence.

The North had its own form of nationalism, which strove to preserve the Union at whatever cost necessary. The Civil War was the culmination of tensions between southern secessionist nationalism and northern unionist nationalism.

A belt of five border states, meanwhile, extended west from Delaware through Missouri. Neither slavery nor southern nationalism were particularly strong in that region, and none of those states seceded.

Before the secession of 11 southern slave states, the formation of the Confederate States of America, and four years of all-out civil war, the North-South divide had been intensifying for decades.

It reached an explosive climax in the 1860 presidential elections, when party alignments overlapped sectional divisions to such extent that northern Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln carried all free states (northern [except New Jersey] and western) and lost all southern slave states. He did not receive a single popular vote in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, or Texas.

Since the 1990s, but particularly following Barack Obamas 2008 electoral victory, sectionalism, rural versus urban antagonism, and other manifestations of geographical political rivalry have remerged with a vengeance. This was exacerbated during the first years of Donald Trumps presidency and reached feverish levels of vitriol and violence in 2019 and 2020.

As was the case during the Antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction, these conflicts are intertwined with manifestations of nationalism, partisan politics, and secessionist sentiments.

While the correspondence between political party affiliation and geographical region is nowhere close to what it was 160 years ago, geography still matters. According to Pew Research Center polls, in 2014, there was a clear overlap between region and party affiliation with 51 percent of North-eastern voters identifying as Democratic/leaning (only 31 percent Republican/leaning). Republican affiliation was much stronger in the South at 41 percent, a statistical tie with Democrats (42 percent).

An examination of the 2016 presidential electoral map reflects uncanny parallels with its 1860 counterpart. Map colors are, of course, inverted because the Republican and Democratic parties have since swapped ideological positions regarding many issues, including civil rights, race relations, and social justice. What has remained constant is the social conservatism and states rights ideology of the South.

Out of the 29 states that voted Republican or Democratic in 1860, all but seven went to the opposing party in 2016. Among them were Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where Republican candidate Trump won by margins of less than 1 percent and a combined total of 78,000 votes.

Tellingly, the political party inversion rate between 1860 and 2016 was 100 percent in New England, the Southern, and Pacific coast states.

During the Antebellum, cities overall leaned more Republican than Democratic, and rural areas are still more conservative than urban centers. These political correlations overlap with contrasting demographic and cultural realities: racially diverse and multicultural cities and apple-pie and Chevrolet truck rural settings.

Stanford University Political Science Professor Jonathan Rodden, who studies the growing political divide between urban and rural areas, has gone as far as stating that contemporary political polarization is all about geography.

A 2018 Pew Research Center poll assessing political and ideological differences among urban, rural, and suburban adults found wide gaps and polarization between urban and rural residents in views about Trump, immigration, abortion, and same-sex marriage.

Interestingly, the researchers concluded that such differences had more to do with party affiliation than with geographic setting. Urban Republicans are significantly more moderate (more evenly split) than their rural counterparts.

The urban-rural political divide has been growing for a couple of decades. In 2008, defeated red presidential candidate John McCain carried 53 percent of the rural vote. Eight years later, Trump received nearly twice as many rural votes (62 percent) as blue candidate Hillary Clinton, who got just 24 percent.

Suburban America, meanwhile, has become purple, mirroring the Antebellums frontier states. May the metaphor of battleground states and regions remain so.

Just like Lincoln was unacceptable to the white South in 1860, Obamas election was intolerable to broad segments of the electorate in 2008. His election gave rise to numerous radical conservative groups and movements, starting with the Tea Party formation in February 2009.

Likewise, the United States has seen an upsurge of neo-confederate militancy and racial hatred and violence, far beyond the geographical limits of the old Confederacy. Confederate flags are flying in states like Mississippi and Alabama but also in old unionist states like Michigan and Wisconsin.

As fringe as they may be, neo-secessionist organizations and petitions multiplied after Obamas election. They have quieted down in the last few years but are likely to mobilize if Trump does not win re-election.

A recent Pew Research Center poll on mask-wearing practices shows some fascinating, if not completely surprising, correlations.

Northeasterners responded that they always (54 percent) and very often (23 percent) wore masks outside their homes. Numbers are much lower in other regions; the Midwest, for example, reflected that only 33 percent of its adult population wore masks all the time and another 29 percent very often.

There was an even stronger correlation with party affiliation with 94 percent of reds wearing masks either all the time or very often, compared to only half as many blues (46 percent). Only 1 percent of Democrats never wore masks, in contrast to 27 percent of Republicans.

It appears that to wear-or-not-wear a mask is todays single most politicized and polarizing issue.

There have been dozens of instances of verbal and physical violence, even deaths over mask-wearing. Are Walmarts, Dollar Stores, and Waffle Houses the counterparts of Bleeding Kansas and Harpers Ferry, the rehearsals of the US Civil War?

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Past as Present? Geographical Polarization, Nationalism, and Secessionism in the US - The Globe Post