GOP Rep Gohmert introduces bill to ban the Democratic Party

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All I got from his backpedalling was "Glorious Founding Fathers needed slavery so they could get rid of slavery! A country free of slavery could not have been built without slavery!"

circular reasoning at best, on that racist senator's part. leave out the "evil" part and that is the bastard's opinion of POC.

Could it not, alternatively, be seen as "The only way to get rid of slavery was to bring the 'slave states' into the union, in order to try to move them away from their dependence on slavery"?

As I understand it (I could be wrong), a large portion of the exports from the USA were dependant on slavery, without which the country would have been unable to import goods needed to sustain itself and would have collapsed. That is not saying that slavery was good, but more reflecting that at that time in history it was "neccesary" and accepted by some, seen as a "necessary evil" by others...

the north got along without slavery, the south just failed at being viable without enslaving human beings, anybody who says that it was a justifiable expedient should look in the goddamned mirror for once.

I haven't been able to find details, so could you enlighten me as to what was supporting the economy of the north (for example, exports), in order to supply them with the imported goods they needed?

My understanding was that a large portion of the northern money came from buying the cheap (slave based) agricultural items from the southern states and on-selling them to Europe.

The north was more heavily reliant on heavy industry, manufacturing, mining, forestry and fishing

The south's economy was a "one trick pony" relying on cash crops. In order to maintain high returns the southerners were completely reliant on slave labour. When slavery was outlawed it had an immediate impact on white farmer's dividends which is why they have always held a grudge. The only thing they wanted to protect from north political "interference" was keeping slaves, All other excuses southerners come up with are fairy tales.

You are right, a massive amount of the prosperity of the North was owed to the importing of cheap cash crops from the South and converting them to finished products for export to Europe. A big part of this was climate. The subtropical climate of much of the American South allowed cash cropped to be grown that could not be grown in (most of) Europe or the North, hence their value to Europe.
This contributed to the underdevelopment of the South before and after the Civil War. The North got wealthier trading the finished products to Europe than the South got from trading raw materials to the North. Southern industry could not compete with northern industry, so they continued to specialize in agriculture. White workers were payed less than their northern counterparts (generally speaking), because they had to accept lower wages to 'compete' with slave labor. Hence even the poor white man's resentment for the slaves, and a resulting weakness in southern organized labor.
The southern white elite eventually saw the writing on the wall. The north was growing at a far greater rate, and were growing wealthy because of cheap southern raw materials. Not to mention that abolitionism was gaining more ground in the north and west, the elite would stand to lose their exploitative way of life. The choice was between losing slavery and a civil war, and they chose the latter.

The great irony is: the white elites owed their states' lesser wealth to their refusal to abandon slavery. If slavery had been abolished in 1776 or earlier, the South would have had more robust economies. Greater development of industry, better payed workers, a better educated populace, stronger organized labor, economic diversification--the list goes on. Southern slaveholders damned themselves in more ways than one. And still there are Americans who treat it like a beneficial evil.

This does lead to an interesting theoretical area: Without bringing in the "neccesary evil" of the slave states when forming the union, would the "United States" of the time have been sustainable?

Had the southern "slave" states formed their own "union" independant of the northern union, could they (theoretically) have moved to process their own raw materials (cutting supplies to the northern states dependant on the cheap, slave-based produce) and eventually forced the north into a "southern states" based union, where slavery continued?

It would have been sustainable without slavery regardless of when slavery ended. Tobacco and cotton production did not end with emancipation. They still would remain valuable resources if they went to the trouble of actually paying their workers. If they had abolished slavery as soon as possible after the revolution ended, it would have been a shock to the economy as it was in the south after the civil war (that and the fact that the south was devastated by the war in general). This economic disruption could have caused unrest and rebellions (as there already were in early US history), and yes, the US as we know it may not have existed. Or the US could have bounced back, and had an earlier start in mending slavery's wounds. If it came down to having the US as we know it or ending slavery as early as possible, I'd pick the latter.

There's a lot of speculation as to what the US would look like if the southern states had stayed with the British, which was not completely out of the question given the large number of British loyalists in the South. The North still would have likely dominated, because slavery would still lead to the underdevelopment of the South both economically and socially. The South's population would also grow more slowly, as slavery and low wages made the Southern states much less appealing to European immigrants than states in the North. With these disadvantages and others, the South still would have lagged behind the North as a result of slavery even if they were independent.

The need for the North to import cash crops from other countries instead of intranational trade with the South would have been a blow to the Northern economy in the short term, yes. Assuming the countries did not like each other, the North would probably end up trading with other places in the West Indies to maintain their place in the Triangle Trade. The South would still be inclined by market forces to stay mainly agrarian bc of its place in the Triangle Trade as a cash crop supplier. I'm not sure what events or reforms would need to happen for the South to try to develop industry to process their own materials. But it would remain very unlikely bc it would take focus off the attention of agriculture, and white slaveholders would not let the status quo be disrupted like that. They would not accept a change which threatened their stranglehold on the land's wealth and politics.

^but this is a lot of historical speculation

tldr; No, we never needed slavery. Slavery was always a detriment in the long term. And if we did need slavery to have the US, then the US is not worth it.

Karma has caught up with Gohmert:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/louis-gohmert-who-refused-to-wear-a-mask-tests-positive-for-coronavirus/ar-BB17ks0p

just before he was set to board air force one with trump no less. close call.

mebbe he bumped into him earlier while still infectious? i suspect though, that trumpy is too tough to die. mean people in general are pretty durable, i have found.