GOP Bad Boy Darwin Jiles pushes Dave Agema for governor

Darwin Jiles, right, and Dave Agema, center,
at an Agema event earlier this year.

The newest MIGOP Bad Boy, Darwin Jiles, twice convicted of violent crimes, is back in the forefront, declaring that in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing same-sex marriage Michigan Republicans should coalesce around another GOP Bad Boy, Dave Agema, for governor in 2018.
In a Facebook post from a few days ago, Jiles, elected the party’s minority vice chair in February, insisted that the GOP rally around Agema for governor and state Rep. Gary Glenn for lieutenant governor. That potential team of running mates has one or two things in common:  extremist views on social issues and homophobic comments bordering on gay-hate.

Jiles, of Oakland County, had some particularly harsh words for the very early frontrunner for the ’18 election – Attorney General Bill Schuette.

"Bill Schuette previously stood against same-sex marriage by enforcing the 2004 amendment banning gay marriage in the state of Michigan," Jiles wrote. "However, those positive deeds of the past are being outweighed by his recent surrender to the federal government. This is an immoral (Supreme Court) decision and a bad reflection on his (Schuette's) governmental leadership."

 

 

While Schuette was on the receiving end of staunch criticism from liberals, moderates and some Republicans for standing by his Supreme Court brief calling for a ban on gay marriages in Michigan, Jiles asserted that the AG is a tool of the GOP establishment and the federal government for not vowing to somehow fight on.

 

Jiles, of course, is the controversial, Agema-backed successful candidate for a vice chair spot in the party based on his widely publicized though mistaken belief that he could keep half of his past criminal record under wraps.

Agema, who has refused to resign from his Republican National Committee post despite numerous homophobic, Islamaphobic and racist comments online, would be the absolute GOP nightmare (on the state and federal level) if he ran for governor.
And Glenn has established quite a track record as an old-school Religious Right homophobe.

Those Republicans who insisted at the February convention that Jiles was a young man with an ugly past who had straightened his life out may want to reconsider their overall view now that he is advocating a path for the state party that is beyond politically suicidal.