This midterm election will go down in history as the Year the Wingnuts Came Out of the Woodwork and Took Office. Case in point: Republican Loy Mauch, newly elected state representative from Arkansas House District 26, an overt neo-Confederate who once hosted a conference with a keynote address titled, “Homage to John Wilkes Booth.” Yikes.

From the Arkansas Times, by David Koon: The South shall rise again.

LOY MAUCH: Photographed at a conference on Abraham Lincoln. (Click to enlarge.)A former head of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans post in Hot Springs, Mauch calls the Confederate flag “a symbol of Jesus Christ,” and is a current member of The League of the South, a group which works toward the formation of an independent Southern nation.

Founded in 1994 in Killen, Ala., The League of the South advocates for “the secession and subsequent independence of the southern states from this forced union and the formation of a southern republic,” according to the “Introduction” page on its website. The site also encourages members to “personally secede from the corrupt and corrupting influence of post-Christian culture in America” by home-schooling children and creating “parallel institutions to which people can attach their loyalties.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center calls the group a “neo-Confederate” organization, adding that League rhetoric often bears racist overtones. “The League believes the ‘godly’ nation it wants to form should be run by an ‘Anglo-Centric’ (read: white) elite that would establish a Christian theocratic state and politically dominate blacks and other minorities,” an SPL report said. …

Asked about his involvement in the League of the South, which listed him as the chairman of their western Arkansas chapter as late as 2005, Mauch said that he’s a dues paying member, but is too busy to be active in the organization and doesn’t attend meetings. He said the chair position was “just a title.” Contrary to the League website, Mauch said the group doesn’t want the former Confederacy to stray from the Union again. “We don’t think we should secede from the Union,” Mauch said. “We just want constitutional government. Secession has never been unconstitutional.”

For seven years, Mauch was the commander of James M. Keller Camp 648 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. He stepped down as commander last year. In 2004, angered by the city of Hot Springs’ refusal to remove a statue of Abraham Lincoln displayed in the Hot Springs Civic and Convention Center, the Keller Camp hosted a conference in Hot Springs called “Seminar on Abraham Lincoln — Truth vs. Myth,” with a keynote address called “Homage to John Wilkes Booth.”

Mauch said that he believes Lincoln didn’t follow the Constitution. Of the statue of Lincoln in the convention center, Mauch said: “I didn’t think it had any place down in Hot Springs, Arkansas. He wasn’t friendly to Arkansas. He didn’t have anything to do with Arkansas. Nobody in Arkansas voted for him.”