Warren Throckmorton has dug up video of the Institute on the Constitution’s Michael Peroutka — the GOP candidate for a seat on a Maryland county council — speaking at the 2012 conference of the secessionist League of the South, and it’s a doozy.
Peroutka’s ties with the League of the South are hardly a secret — he used to sit on the group’s board and has asked for its members help in his campaign — but in his 2012 speech, he made it clear that he agrees with the group’s stand that the South may need to secede and cause the “destruction” of the current “regime.”
“I don’t disagree with Dr. Hill at all that this regime is beyond reform,” he told the crowd, referring to League of the South president Michael Hill. But he told group members he was concerned that what he calls the “biblical view” of government should “survive the secession.”
“I don’t want people from League of the South to think for one minute that I’m about reforming the current regime, or studying the Constitution is about reforming the current regime,” he said. “I, like many of you, and like Patrick Henry, probably have come to the conclusion that we smelled a rat from the beginning.”
He then asked the crowd to “stand for the national anthem”…and led the crowd in a spirited rendition of “Dixie.”
Peroutka’s influence on the Religious Right extends beyond his foray into local politics. He was the 2004 Constitution Party nominee for president, he is a great ally and funder of Religious Right hero and Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, he makes a weekly appearance with influential Iowa conservative talk show host Steve Deace (and recently helped Deace launch a new fetal “personhood” group), and he recently donated a $1 million dinosaur skeleton to the Creation Museum.
Late last week, the Republican candidate for county executive in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, where Peroutka is running for office, asked Peroutka to resign from the League of the South because his membership “could be considered racist.”
The candidate, Steve Schuh, however, reported from his conversation with Peroutka: “He has assured me that he is not a racist and that he believes in the equality of all members of the human family. He has further assured me that he does not believe in secession of any portion of our country.”
We’ve clipped a couple pieces of Peroutka’s League of the South speech here, but you can find the whole thing, which was recorded by an attendee, in Throckmorton’s post.
