GOP Senate Candidate Addressed Conference Hosted by Neo-Confederate Group That Promotes Secessionis
Source: Mother Jones
Mississippi Republican Chris McDaniel, who is challenging Sen. Thad Cochran and backed by the Senate Conservatives Fund and the Club for Growth, took the stage with a historian who says Lincoln was a Marxist.
Chris McDaniel is taking the "GOP Civil War" to a new level. Two months ago, the tea party-backed Mississippi Senate candidate addressed a neo-Confederate conference and costume ball hosted by a group that promotes the work of present-day secessionists and contends the wrong side won the "war of southern independence." Other speakers at the event included a historian who believes Lincoln was a Marxist and Ryan Walters, a PhD candidate who worked on McDaniel's first political campaign and wrote recently that the "controversy" over President Barack Obama's birth certificate "hasn't really been solved."
McDaniel, a state senator, is challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Thad Cochran in next summer's GOP Senate primary. After announcing his run last week, McDaniel quickly picked up endorsements from the Club for Growth and the Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee founded by former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a prominent backer of the tea party. Both groups are key players in the internal GOP battle between establishment-minded Republicans and tea party insurgents and are backing right-wing challenges to incumbent Republicans whom they deem insufficiently conservative. Cochran, who is finishing out his 35th year in the Senate and has not said if he will seek re-election, earned the ire of tea partiers by voting to re-open the federal government and avert defaulting on the debt. McDaniel, whose campaign bus features an image of Article I of the Constitution, has promised to make Cochran's debt ceiling vote a centerpiece of his campaign.
With their endorsements of McDaniel, the Senate Conservatives Fund and the Club for Growth have shown just how far they are willing to go in terms of embracing the far right to prosecute their war for the soul of the party. In August, McDaniel addressed a neo-Confederate conference in Laurel, Miss., near his hometown of Ellisville. A local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), the Jones County Rosin Heels, hosted the two-day event, which the group described in invitations as a "Southern Heritage Conference" for "politically incorrect folks." Attendees were advised to dress in "Confederate uniforms and antebellum ball gowns or wee kilties." McDaniel's appearance at the Rosin Heels heritage conference was not a one-off occurrence; weeks earlier he was the keynote speaker at a separate event in Jackson.
Read more: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/gop-senate-candidate-spoke-neo-confederate-conference-august
Reinforcing the Redneck brand!
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BE10sCoach
(48 posts)NUTS. Who really cares Tea Party Republicans are the dumbest people I think I've ever run across.
Baitball Blogger
(46,753 posts)voters.
All their other ideas are a bust.
Trickle-down economics was a bust.
Deregulation was a bust.
All they have left is prejudice.
Baitball Blogger
(46,753 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Shockingly, 46 percent of the state's GOP voters replied "illegal." 14 percent bizarrely responded "not sure." That means about 60 percent of these Southern Republicans are hearkening back to a time--1958 to be exact--when the American mainstream overwhelmingly looked down on people with different shades of skin getting married.
For some context, in 2007 Gallup conducted a nationwide survey finding that 77 percent of Americans approved of interracial marriage and only 17 percent explicitly disapproved. At the time, Gallup pointed out that in 1958 only 4 percent of Americans favored interracial marriage and that as late as 1994 less than half of Americans approved. But as their chart shows, support had been rising rapidly ever since.
Interestingly, Public Policy Polling crunched the numbers to get a picture of which candidates intolerant voters preferred in the GOP primary. The verdict? Sarah Palin probably won't be pleased: "Palin's net favorability with folks who think interracial marriage should be illegal (+55 at 74/19) is 17 points higher than it is with folks who think interracial marriage should be legal."
Harry Monroe
(2,935 posts)Be careful painting all Mississippians with a broad brush. I am a white Mississippian and I am not a white supremacist. There are however, pockets in this state. I lived in Starkville, MS for 15 years before moving down to Biloxi and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Compared to this area, Starkville, in the northeast section of the state, is positively progressive and liberal!! And you would think our proximity to New Orleans would temper the rampant racism here. You'd be wrong, it doesn't seem to be the case.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)McCain got 88% of the the white vote in MS in 2008.
It's hard to imagine any candidate losing in MS because he's too rightwing, pro-confederacy, or cozy with white supremacism.
Harry Monroe
(2,935 posts)I'm not defending this state, but I know a lot of white people here that aren't white supremacists. From my perspective, I can say that most of the people I know aren't. And besides you're swinging an awful broad brush by your 88% figure and making an equivalence that voting for John McCain = "white supremacy". That's a pretty narrow accusation.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)interracial marriage.
Mississippi still uses the Confederate flag as its state flag.
The Stranger
(11,297 posts)Watch.
hue
(4,949 posts)allan01
(1,950 posts)new confederates? if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, then dammit jim ,its a duck.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)the national Republican brand.
Maybe David Duke should run as a member of the Tea Party--he could replace Wicker.
frylock
(34,825 posts)
IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)You couldn't slip a thin slice of excrement between any of them.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)Shall we continue this word play or do you want to call it a draw now?
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)the poster you were responding to was being sarcastic. I know that poster enough to know that.
IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)Thank you, btw.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)I cannot see where it was implied you were pond scum. If I said something clumsily, I apologize.
IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)Think of a suitable penance and I'll do it, just to prove I'm sorry for making you feel bad. You were very kind indeed to send me the previous message.
The one thing I won't do is kiss a Republican, though. I'm afraid it might ... well, let's not go there. Don't want to lose my dinner.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)misunderstandings happen
IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)
JimboBillyBubbaBob
(1,389 posts)You people are giving Neanderthals a bad name with your histrionics. Heritage Conference me arse. I'm a southerner, yet I choose to live in the 21st century. Club for Growth, sounds like a penis growth club! Geez, how much must we endure?
Harry Monroe
(2,935 posts)"A penis growth club". Plenty room for growth and improvement down here in "Ole Miss" and I ain't talking about peckers!!
