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Confederates on the rise

Maryland’s antebellum AG candidate

They don’t even try to hide it:

Meet Michael Peroutka, one of the two candidates on the ballot for Maryland attorney general in the state’s GOP primary today. As TPM alum Cameron Joseph reports for Vice, Peroutka was a board member for the neo-Confederate League of the South until 2014, believes public education is “the 10th plank in the Communist Manifesto,” and at one point he declared that he was “still angry” that Maryland wasn’t allowed to secede from the union during the Civil War.

But don’t go calling Peroutka a neo-Confederate; there’s nothing “neo” about it, thank you very much! “If anything, I want to be just a true Confederate,” he said in 2014.

Even to this day, Peroutka won’t say whether he supports the South seceding from the union, telling Vice only that he has “no comment” on the issue and that it’s up to the Southern states “to self-determine.”

Peroutka’s beaten his establishment-backed primary rival, Jim Shalleck, in fundraising. The former has raised about $50,000 (including a $10,000 loan to himself), the latter a measly $10,000

As Josh Marshall quipped: “when you’re such a hardcore confederate sympathizer you’re running in a state that didn’t even manage to join the confederacy the first time.”

I understand Democrats aren’t supposed to point these things out because it’s helping the Republicans win so don’t tell anyone that I shared this, ok? I don’t want to be blamed* for the fascists winning because I pointed out that they were fascists.

*I’m being facetious, of course. I’m just appalled by all this press saying that Democrats pointing out that these loons are loons are to blame if Republicans love them.

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