Above is a photo of Denne Sweeney with Rick Perry. Chris McDaniel spoke before the Sons of Confederate Veterans that Sweeney took over from my kin, Anthony Hodges.

Jon Presco

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… The group also purchases billboards, with messages such as “Happy birthday, President Jefferson Davis,” and “Fort Sumter was fired on when Lincoln tried to reinforce his customs house for tax collection.”

As Murphy points out, this will be wholly uncontroversial with Republican voters, unless the race ends up turning on Alexander Stephens’ defense of the Confederate Constitution. (“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.”) But Murphy’s a little tough on the historian who showed up at this event and claimed that Lincoln was influenced by Marx. The two did exchange letters, albeit late into the former’s presidency.

https://rosamondpress.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/order-of-the-confederate-rose/

Mississippi Senate Candidate Says He Didn’t Speak at Neo-Confederate Conference”

Christ McDaniel has spoken before the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

—By Tim Murphy
| Fri Nov. 1, 2013 1:07 PM PDT
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McDaniel for Senate
In October, I reported that Mississippi GOP senate candidate Chris McDaniel had delivered speeches to the local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, including during a conference the neo-Confederate group held in August. When I contacted McDaniel’s campaign for the story, a spokesman said: “Senator McDaniel has driven across Mississippi to speak to many groups over the past decade.” He did not dispute that McDaniel had attended the August gathering. A spokesman for the SCV chapter also told me that McDaniel had attended the August event as well as an earlier event, but now McDaniel is saying he wasn’t at the August gathering. He told the Clarion-Ledger that although he had been scheduled to speak at the event, but missed it because he was in Chicago for a conference for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). An SCV member backed him up:
“He wasn’t at this last one,” said [SCV spokesman George Jaynes]. “He missed a flight coming out of Chicago … A guy from Mother Jones news, which I had never heard of, called me the other night and was asking questions. Maybe I didn’t explain myself well. Maybe this guy misunderstood me. But (McDaniel) wasn’t there.”
The Southern Heritage Conference was Aug. 9-10. The ALEC conference in Chicago was Aug. 7-9. McDaniel said he recollects he stayed over at least a day after the ALEC event, and was still out of state when the Rosin Heels event was held.
McDaniel also alleges that Mother Jones “doctored” a photo to falsely depict him speaking to the event; the image was identified in the story as a photoshop.

Though McDaniel might have missed the conference because of airline issues, he did deliver the keynote address at an event the group held on June 22 in Jackson. Jaynes confirmed to the Clarion-Ledger that McDaniel had indeed spoken to the group in previous years (which Jaynes also told me). So whether or not McDaniel made it to the August conference, there is no question he’s been a friend to this particular group.