Tea party candidate for U.S. Senate Chris McDaniel hopes to unseat current Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran (R) in the 2014 election. According to Mother Jones magazine, McDaniel addressed a neo-Confederate ball two months ago alongside speakers who called President Abraham Lincoln a “Marxist” and alleged that the “Birther” argument about the birthplace of President Barack Obama “hasn’t really been solved.”

In spite of the tea party’s historic unpopularity with the public at large, McDaniel is hoping to topple Cochran by attacking him as insufficiently loyal to the conservative cause and the values espoused by the tea party.

Cochran has received support from Washington think tank The Club for Growth and an endorsement from the Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee headed by Republican Senator turned Heritage Foundation director Jim DeMint (SC). Mother Jones’ Tim Murphy marveled that the tea party is embracing a man who has advocated for secession and who consorts with groups and individuals who still maintain that the Confederates should have won the U.S. Civil War.

More: Mississippi Tea Party Candidate for U.S. Senate Connected to Secessionists and Neo-Confederates