The conviction of Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio of seditious conspiracy was a blip last week, to the relief of the RNC.

I happened to be in South Florida when it occurred and picked up a local newspaper, the Miami Herald. There was more extensive coverage of trial and conviction as Tarrio hailed from Miami. It wasn't until I hit the editorial page that my jaw dropped.

"Miami's homegrown extremist, former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio, wanted a revolution….what he should get is a lot of years in the slammer for trying to violently overthrow the government…Now, can we finally toss the other Proud Boys from the local GOP executive committee, where this hate group has wormed its way in?" asked the Herald's editorial board.

Wait. What?!

Some further reading (and a couple monthly subscription payments to get past paywalls) revealed that the at least six members of the Miami-Dade Republican Party's executive committee are current or former Proud Boys.

In 2022, executive committee chair René Garcia told the New York Times "Yes, we have fringe elements…my job as Republican chairman is to protect everyone's First Amendment Right, however wrong they may be."

There's protecting First Amendment rights. Then there's letting white supremacists on your executive committee. I'm just saying.

And let me be clear, the Proud Boys aren't just racists. They are also anti-feminist, and anti-LGBTQ. Let's consider them all-around bigots.

This is an optics problem for the GOP. The consistent narrative from the RNC about January 6 is that the most violent rioters, including the members of organized hate groups, are fringe elements, and not part of the Republican Party.

Last Friday's Miami Herald editorial changed that picture for me. Miami-Dade is the largest local GOP organization in Florida, in turn one of the largest GOP states. This is direct acceptance of open racists and bigots into party leadership.

I am not okay with this. No Republican should be okay with this.

Donald Trump openly courted the Proud Boys and other hate groups like the Boogaloo Bois and Rise Above. This should have been called out by RNC leadership at the time. It was not.

Do we need the white supremacist vote that badly?

Does any major party need the white supremacist vote?

They. Do. Not.

Republicans must stop shrugging our shoulders over stories like this and recognize that welcoming the Proud Boys and their ilk into party leadership roles drives even more party members and voters away. Why are we refusing to take a stand over people with the vilest views just because they support Donald Trump?

No candidate is worth this moral and ethical freefall.

I want to close by observing that the reason that this story didn't get more pickup is because only two publications really carried it – the New York Times and the Miami Herald. Both publications rightly ask readers to pay for premium content. Americans have a concept that news included in a paid television cable package is free, and anything on the internet should be, too. This is a shame.

I spent five entire dollars to get one-month subscriptions to the Times and the Herald to ensure I had facts straight for this column. Additional data came from ProPublica and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

News content is not free. Journalists work hard and are paid little. Please consider adding a newspaper subscription to your media budget along with your cable and streaming subscriptions. This reporting is groundbreaking and world-changing, and you don't get it anywhere else.

Merritt Hamilton Allen is a PR executive and former Navy officer. She appears regularly as a panelist on NM PBS and is a frequent guest on News Radio KKOB. A Republican, she lives amicably with her Democratic husband north of I-40 where they run two head of dog, and two of cat. She can be reached at news.ind.merritt@gmail.com.