It's time for GOP's Romney McDaniel to come clean: Should Agema go?

The Michigan Republican Party has a growing "Agema problem" and it's up to the next state party chairman to solve it.

Romney McDaniel

 But the likely 2014-15 chair, Ronna  Romney McDaniel, Mitt Romney's niece, seems eager to avoid the issue.
The Agema problem, of course, refers to Michigan's Republican National Committeeman, Dave Agema, who has quite a political resume -- homophobe, white supremacist, anti-Muslim bigot.
None of this, at least publicly, seems to bother Romney McDaniel, the frontrunner in the competition for new party chair. In fact, she has proudly accepted the endorsement of one of Agema's biggest fans -- "Trucker" Randy Bishop, the tea party bloviater who last year declared war on the GOP establishment.

Nonetheless, Romney McDaniel, with limited experience as a political activist but facing two or more lesser-known candidates, seems likely to win the chairmanship in a walk thanks to her name recognition and potential star power.
Meanwhile, the party's ball and chain, Agema, remains on a mission to spit in the faces of all his detractors. Just days after posting a blatantly racist article on his Facebook page, this morning he piled on by posting a screed that warns that Muslims, in Michigan and across the globe, are on a mission to kill Christians and Jews and control the world.
Romney McDaniel should be campaigning for Agema's ouster just as she campaigns for the top spot in the MIGOP.
But the initial message to her supporters that Trucker Randy, chair of the Antrim County GOP, is among those party officials backing her is a troubling aspect of the upcoming convention election for chair.

Trucker Randy

Beyond his oafish behavior, Trucker Randy was hit with two felony convictions in 1999, back in his days in Macomb County. Based on his fraudulent activities in attempting to resurrect a proposed subdivision, an administrative law judge revoked Trucker Randy’s builder’s license and said that the deviance “illustrates (Bishop’s) inability to serve the public in an open and honest manner and his lack of good moral character.”

Newly term-limited state representative Pete Lund, a possible party chair candidate who would emerge as better qualified than anyone in the field, said he did not want to comment on Romney McDaniel's association with Trucker Randy.


But the Shelby Township Republican did say this about including the Bishop endorsement in her first public statement on her candidacy:
"Those would not have been the first words out of my mouth."
In the media, Ken Braun and Kathy Hoekstra have emerged as a dynamic duo, keeping the Republican Party honest and true to form. In the last several hours, as the February state convention approaches, they have pounced on Agema's latest racist rant and again insisted that the GOP cut all ties with the former state representative.
In a blog written today for The Detroit News, Hoekstra points out that the remarks on blacks and criminal tendencies that Agema posted because he found them "enlightening" were written under a pen name and can be traced back to a "white supremacist think tank." In the past, Agema has posted remarks by a former neo-Nazi Holocaust denier.

Agema

Here's a bit of Hoekstra's take on the party's Agema problem:
"The leader entrusted with growing the Republican base in Michigan, in other words, finds himself enlightened by a fake name and a racist website.
"If he really wants enlightenment on crime in America, Agema should quit citing questionable sources and then passing them off to friends and supporters, and instead consult a few of his most vocal defenders.
"For enlightenment on ... computer crime, extortion and police stand-offs, Agema can turn to Doug Sedenquist, a former state Republican committee member and Upper Peninsula radio talk show host.
"Sedenquist sympathetically offered Agema his airwaves to defend the first round of Facebook spew regarding gays. For that enlightenment though,  Agema would have to travel up to the Ojibway Correctional Facility in the far western U.P. That’s where Sedenquist will be for at least the next two and a half years following his 2014 convictions."

Braun, in his column for MLive, noted that many months ago top Republicans called for Agema to step down from the RNC: outgoing state party Cairman Bobby Schostak, GOP national Chairman Reince Priebus, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, six Republican members of Congress from Michigan, and numerous other GOP officials at the state and county level.
Braun warned of the harmful effects extremists can impose on political organizations:
"The Republican, tea party and free market movements are regularly (and otherwise falsely) accused of having a racial motivation for disagreeing with the left-wing policies of an African-American president. In its original form, the modern tea party was concerned with economic liberty, not social issues, and certainly not racism. Just as legendary Big Labor leaders Walter Reuther and George Meany purged communists from their ranks, supporters of free markets have an obligation to protect their principles and reputations from a supposed fellow traveler repeatedly spewing hateful screeds."

And yet, one of the current candidates for party chair openly defends Agema, particularly the anti-gay remarks. Joel Poynter of Baldwin said this week that Schostak and GOP leaders were wrong to criticize -- and attempt to ostracize -- Agema.
“Dave didn’t say anything that really wasn’t part of the (party) platform,” Poynter said in an interview. “But yet some at the state level really tried to crucify him. I have a problem with that. If it’s in the platform, why are you crucifying this guy?”Poynter seems ready to dismiss all of Agema's ugliness as a simple confirmation of the RNC committeeman's support of traditional marriage.
But those Agema sycophants better be careful when they reference the GOP platform.



The platform does not say that "filthy" homosexuals are prone to orgies, murderous behavior and suicide. But Agema endorsed those thoughts.
The platform does not say that blacks, as a race, cannot reason or communicate well and they fail to control their impulses. But Agema found those claims "very interesting."
The platform does not say that  Muslims, engaged in a global plot, are killing Christians and Jews at a rate approaching Hitler's Nazi Army. But Agema issues those warnings about Islam.

The obvious danger for the GOP is that voters will begin to blend the platform the party stands on with the intolerant views that Agema sinks to, and the two categories will become one.