It seems that voters in Arkansas have sent someone who is a former head and current active member of a hate group to its state house. GOP candidate Loy Mauch was elected to represent the 26th State House District near Hot Springs. According to an article on the Democratic Legislative Campaigning Committee's website, Mauch is a proud, active member and a former regional chairperson of the League of the South, a neo-Confederate group that advocates for a second Southern secession and a society dominated by "European Americans." The league believes the "godly" nation it wants to form should be run by an "Anglo-Celtic" elite that would establish a Christian theocratic state and politically dominate blacks and other minorities. The group is also against interracial marriage, believes antebellum slavery is God-ordained, and wants a hierarchical society made up of superiors, equals and inferiors.
Lauch is apparently a dues-paying member of this hate group, which currently has 15,000 members. It gets worse. Mauch has a history of neo-Confederate radicalism, hosting a conference to disparage Abraham Lincoln with a keynote address entitled, "Homage to John Wilkes Booth." In response to the election of Barack Obama in 2008, Mauch used the Confederate battle flag as a rallying cry to declare the new president illegitimate. Mauch wrote to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: "The government has lost its moral authority over God-fearing Americans … I wish more patriots like James Vandiver would take their stand for what the Confederate Battle Flag truly symbolizes." Is this what the GOP means by Southern strategy? What's sadder than pandering to people filled with venom and hate is that Mauch was actually elected by voters. Shaking our heads over here at The Root.
Read more at the Democratic Legislative Campaigning Committee's website.
A previous version of this posting incorrectly stated that Mauch was elected to Congress.