Mother Jones reported that Tea Partier and U.S. Senate hopeful Chris McDaniel (R-Miss.) will run against the current Republican Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran in 2014. What’s so unique about this? McDaniel supports secessionist and neo-Confederate politics.
Results from a 2011 Public Policy Polling survey showed that “47 percent of Mississippians – and 21 percent of Mississippi Republicans – were satisfied with the outcome of the Civil War.” McDaniel falls in with that 21 percent.
McDaniel spoke at a neo-Confederate conference and costume ball with other right-wing radical speakers. The Southern Heritage Conference, the group that threw the party, promotes secessionism and “contends the wrong side won the ‘war of southern independence.’” Joining McDaniel at the gala were extreme right-wingers historian Al Benson and University of Southern Mississippi grad student Ryan Walters.
In Benson’s book, “Red Republicans and Lincoln’s Marxists,” he asserts that President Abraham Lincoln’s political moves were influenced by Karl Marx. Benson, who identifies himself as a “true copperhead,” a Northerner who supported the Confederacy during the Civil War, posed the question “Was Abraham Lincoln influenced by communism when the Union condemned the rights of Southern states to express their independence? It’s shocking to think so.”
Univ. of S. Mississippi grad student Walters used his time to rescusitate the President Obama birth certificate controversy, saying that the issue “hasn’t really been resolved.” Obama’s birth certificate came to the public eye in 2008.
Should McDaniel get elected into Congress, he will be the newest addition to the insurgent group of Republicans who indict the traditional, establishment Republicans for being weak for striking a deal with the Democrat-run Senate over the shutdown. However, if McDaniel himself is a secessionist, having him in Congress could change the tone of the Tea Party.
McDaniel already has the Tea Party’s blessings. If secessionism is brought into the Tea Party, they would only further alienate themselves from Congress, whether or not they made the effort or not, enter irony.
Josh is a writer and researcher with Ring of Fire. Follow him on Twitter @dnJdeli.
