Montgomery County GOP "Investigated" Peroutka's Extremist Ties
County GOP Chair Says Party "Comfortable" with Peroutka's Extremist Ties
Last month, we talked about how the Montgomery County Republican Party was again sponsoring the “Class on the Constitution” offered by the Institute on the Constitution.
Well, the Montgomery County Republican Central Committee has done an investigation of the matter and found everything is hunky dory.
In an email “Sent blind copied to Central Committee Members and other great Republicans”, Central Committee Chairman Dennis Melby said that the group “investigated” Peroutka and decoded everything was on the up and up.
Candice Clough and Paul Agle along with other Committee members have been coordinating and participating in the Maryland Constitution classes held at our Headquarters. Before it started we had a few publications alleging that the instructor was still affiliated with an extremist group – one he had left a decade ago because he felt they did not reflect his values. Members of the class and several Central Committee Members investigated and spoke with the instructor and were comfortable he had done the right thing in cancelling his membership with them. The press however likes a story like this portraying Republicans in a bad light.
No doubt, Melby is referring to Peroutka’s membership in the League of the South.
But Peroutka said publicly that he left the League of the South in 2014. Half a decade ago was 2018. And Peroutka was defending the League of the South in a video during his campaign for Attorney General last year.
Even assuming this was true, none of this changes the facts that:
Peroutka attended a QAnon conference last year.
Peroutka refused to concede his election last year;
Or that the Institute on the Constittuion’s philosophy is based off of the radical Christian Reconstructionism of Rousas Rushdoony.
If Melby and the rest of the Montgomery County Republican Central Committee thank that concerns with their association with Peroutka boil down to one thing, they are sorely misunderstanding the nature of Peroutka’s radicalism and the cancer that he is on conservatism.
As I wrote last month:
The absolute last thing Republicans in Maryland need is to have open ties to radical extremism. Yet this is exactly what the Montgomery County Republican Party is doing. Associating themselves with the IOTC would be bad enough in a vacuum, but Montgomery County is uniquely situated in that it is among the most challenging counties for a Republican to win. Republicans, bluntly, have been getting their asses kicked across the county for twenty-five years. It is a nearly Sisyphean task for a Republican to win in the county, and yet the County Party apparatus thinks it is helpful to associate themselves with radical kooks with extremist ties.