Ronna Romney McDaniel For State Chair

FROM WEST MICHIGAN POLITICS NEWSLETTER

>>>One issue that has been hotly contested is whether or not Romney-McDaniel is a “grassroots conservative” as her literature claims. It really depends on how one defines grassroots. However, Romney-McDaniel’s support of Dave Trott in his primary against Kerry Bentivolio is immensely important and quite revealing.

Like the Amash/Ellis primary, that Trott/Bentivolio race is one to remember where people sided. While not a total “litmus test,” it is part of the rumination process for many informed conservative voters when deciding who to vote for, if applicable.

Who is David Trott, aside from one of the newest members of the Michigan Congressional delegation?

The Detroit Free Press notes: “Trott became a leader in the foreclosure industry that boomed in 2008 when the housing market went bust by buying up companies needed to complete a foreclosure from beginning to end. And he profits at each step of the process.

Besides his law firm that handles legal work, Trott owns or has a financial interest in the document company that processes paperwork, a newspaper that publishes required legal notices, the title companies that do the deed work, and a large real estate firm that sometimes handles the homes on which his clients have foreclosed…

For lenders looking to take back a home from a delinquent borrower, Trott & Trott offered a unique one-stop-shopping business model. For Trott, there was money to be made on each foreclosure that came through his business empire — in 2009, by his own accounting, he handled 80,000 in Michigan alone.

The banks paid his firm a flat fee for each foreclosure completed — exactly how much, Trott won’t say. Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show that beyond his firm’s legal fees, Trott’s businesses generated hundreds of millions of dollars for him and his business partners…

Trott’s business was so valuable, Detroit Legal News took out a $15-million life insurance policy on Trott and paid him a $500,000 annual consulting fee, as long as his law firm provided at least 1,000 foreclosure notices per month, the SEC filings show.”

Kerry Bentivolio is about as grassroots as it gets. A former school teacher, mall Santa, veteran, and all around average guy, Bentivolio has been hated by the establishment since the beginning. They even tried to run Nancy Cassis against him in a write-in campaign to prevent him from winning the primary back in 2012.

When David Trott announced he would run against Bentivolio, he named Romney-McDaniel as one of his campaign leaders. The Detroit Free Press wrote:

“While Bentivolio struggled to attract the support of high-placed Republicans in local circles last year — and won despite that — Trott can already claim such backing: He was part of former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s finance team and counts among his campaign co chairs former state Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, Wayne County Commissioner Laura Cox, Ronna Romney McDaniel and former state Rep. Andrew (Rocky) Raczkowski.”

Bentivolio, for his part, is still quite upset over Romney McDaniel’s high profile role in the race that saw him get “evicted” by Trott, the “Foreclosure king.” He recently took to Facebook, writing:

“Let’s me see if I understand you correctly? You want me to support someone who betrayed her party faithful and now you want me to support her as the MI GOP Chair? What? Are you crazy! I placed her in the same category as I placed Jane Fonda. Sorry. I fought in two wars for my country, I don’t kiss anyone’s ring nor their puppet master’s ass. I’m supporting Norm Hughes.”

Bentivolio, left, Trott, right

Trott was involved heavily with Fannie and Freddie Mac according to USA Today:

“With 96 attorneys, the Farmington Hills firm is one of two law firms in Michigan authorized by both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage underwriters, to represent mortgage servicers foreclosing on government-backed mortgages.

FROM: Roland Bell

You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? –Matthew 7:16 Tomorrow, Michigan Republican Delegates will elect who they want to lead

A Choice Not An Echo

You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they?
–Matthew 7:16

Tomorrow, Michigan Republican Delegates will elect who they want to lead their party: who they want to make the rules, who they want as the face of their organization.

It’s no coincidence that Republican Party leadership is elected less than two months after the new term begins, just as it’s no coincidence that massive tax increases are proposed in Lansing two weeks after the November election.

If the party convention was held six months from now, delegates might demand their leaders hold politicians accountable for their bad behavior, which is typically evident six months into a term.

That is nothing they want now, when the Party Establishment is, once again, pushing upon the delegation its choice for Chair, draped as always in warm words for the grassroots Republicans who labored in the precincts to elect these politicians.

Yet even held this early, we can glance over to the national stage, where our elected representatives remind us that it’s for the Establishment they work for, regardless of whether the grassroots elected them.

Ann Coulter explains how the Republican Establishment is already selling the grassroots out on amnesty for illegal immigrants:

Back when they needed our votes before the last election, Republicans were hairy-chested warriors, vowing to block Obama’s unconstitutional “executive amnesty” — if only voters gave them a Senate majority. The resulting Republican landslide suggested some opposition to amnesty.

Heading into the election, college professor Dave Brat took out the sitting House majority leader and amnesty supporter Eric Cantor in a primary, despite being outspent 40-1. It was the greatest upset in history since the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” at the Lake Placid Olympics: Never before has a House majority leader been defeated in a primary. And Brat did it by an astonishing 55.5 percent to 45.5 percent.

Again, the voters seemed to be expressing disquiet with amnesty.

After that, even amnesty-supporting Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., was denouncing Obama’s executive amnesty. “If the president were to do that,” he said, “and we have a Republican majority in the United States Senate, why, we have a number of options that we don’t now have to remind him to read Article I of the Constitution.”

Poll after poll showed Americans ranking illegal immigration as the No. 1 most important problem facing the nation. We haven’t changed our minds. Last week, an Associated Press-Gfk poll showed that Obama’s single most unpopular policy is his position on illegal immigration.

In other words, Obamacare is more popular than amnesty. That’s like losing a popularity contest to Ted Bundy.

Since at least 2006, voters have insistently told pollsters they don’t want amnesty. Seemingly bulletproof Republican congressmen have lost their seats over amnesty. President Bush lost the entire House of Representatives over amnesty. What else do we have to do to convince you we don’t want amnesty, Republicans? Make it a host on “The View”?

Before the election, then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell complained that Obama’s decision to delay his executive amnesty until after the election was a ploy to prevent Americans from “hold(ing) his party accountable in the November elections.”

But voters went ahead and held Obama accountable! Now McConnell is Senate majority leader — and he claims his hands are tied.

McConnell’s spokesman at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Brad Dayspring, predicted that Obama’s amnesty threat would drive voters to “elect a new Senate (that) will stand up to the president.”

Check! Mission accomplished! Done and done! Officially off our bucket list. OK, guys, your turn. When do you start standing up to the president? Hello? Hell-oooo?

To gin up votes, “Republican insiders” told the Washington Examiner last fall that “the results of the midterm elections” would determine how “aggressive” the GOP would be in fighting Obama’s amnesty.

Voters gave you a blow-out victory, Republicans. You cleaned their clocks. (Have you seen Harry Reid lately?) Where’s that promised aggression on amnesty?

Republicans and George Will tell us they can’t stand up to Obama’s executive amnesty because the media are unfair.

Oh, well, in that case … never mind. [...]

Why don’t Republicans spend all their airtime attacking the media for lying about what Obama’s amnesty does and what the Democrats are doing? It’s hard to avoid concluding that Republicans aren’t trying to make the right arguments. In fact, it kind of looks like they’re intentionally throwing the fight on amnesty.

If a Republican majority in both houses of Congress can’t stop Obama from issuing illegal immigrants Social Security cards and years of back welfare payments, there is no reason to vote Republican ever again.

The Republican Establishment never opposed amnesty. The Republican Establishment is not even truly Republican. It’s just the Establishment.

As conservative matriarch Phyllis Schlafly explained in her recently updated 1964 classic, A Choice Not An Echo:
After Mitt Romney’s November 2012 defeat, the Republican National Committee issued a ninety-seven page report that commentators called an “Autopsy.” The Republican Party was not really dead as the title implied, but it was bleeding from the Establishment’s mistakes, namely, imposing on us a series of losers–Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, all so-called moderates. The highly paid Republican srategists instructed all candidates not to discuss social or moral issues and were so incompetent that they lost nearly all the US Senate races on which they spent three hundred million dollars in television ads (pocketing a handsome percentage of that figure in fees, of course.)

Romney and his paid staff made no effort to reach out to various subgroups such as the Tea Parties, or the Reagan Democrats (who were looking for a leader to stop the hemorrhaging of US jobs to Asia), or the social issue conservatives. Then Romney insulted the libertarians. Ron Paul claimed 177 duly elected delegates to the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, but Romney’s people refused to allow their votes to be announced during the roll call of states.

The RNC’s Autopsy included a lot of chatter about “growth” and “opportunity.” Thirty times it brought up the need to be more “inclusive,” but that inclusiveness did not extend to those who want to talk about the right to life or traditional marriage. The Autopsy pompously declared, “You have to have candidates who don’t make tragic mistakes,” but the fatal mistakes were made by the Establishment’s own candidates and their strategists. The Establishment has a worse record of picking candidates than the grassroots, who have picked winners such as Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and Mike Lee.

[Any of this sound familiar? Who picked Terri Lynn Land to run for US Senate last year? The Establishment, or the grassroots?]

The liberal pollster Patrick Caddell summarized the Republican problem. “The Republican Party is in the grips of what I call the CLEC–the Consultant, Lobbylist, and Establishment Complex,” which he defined as “a self-serving interconnected network of individuals interest in preserving their own power far more than in winning elections.” Caddell reminded us, “Just follow the money,” commenting on the hundreds of millions of dollars this group spent on the losing efforts of most of their so-called “moderate” candidates.

The most insufferable part of the Autopsy’s advice is the admonition to embrace comprehensive immigration “reform.” Massive evidence collected by Eagle Forum from the leading pollsters proves that endorsing or legislating any form of amnesty will produce votes for Democrats, not Republicans.
And now here we are.

The Establishment’s candidate is absolutely clear. In fact, this year it’s never been clearer: instead of two competing factions (DeVos and Yob) both factions have united behind one candidate.

Ronna Romney McDaniel is the Establishment’s candidate and everybody knows it. Nobody is so foolish as to deny it.

The past two presidential campaign cycles were engineered by the Party Establishment to benefit one candidate, Mitt Romney, who was assumed to walk away with Michigan since after all, he was born here and his father was governor. Hence, the primary was moved very early, in defiance of RNC rules, as the “Mitt-mentum” Michigan was expected to create would help him. If it meant our national delegation was stripped by half, so be it–the state party was all in for Romney, and set the rules for his benefit.

Now that Mitt is not running, the state legislature just voted to push Michigan’s primary back behind “Super Tuesday,” often the deciding date in the nomination process, removing any remaining relevance we might have had in the presidential race, since, after all, the Establishment’s chosen candidate, the pro-amnesty, pro-Common Core Jeb Bush, has no interest in Michigan.

There is no need to speculate how Ronna Romney McDaniel, member of the Republican Royal Family, would govern the Michigan Republican Party. We can see it happening now.

So instead of pretending Ronna Romney McDaniel is not the Establishment, we are told that yes, Ronna Romney McDaniel is the Establishment, but a kinder, gentler Establishment, one that will be inclusive to the grassroots.

We are told, Look! Ronna has lots of experience working with the grassroots! Really? How so?

She was an early backer of David Trott, the Establishment’s pick to knock out Rep. Kerry Bentivolio, the so-called “accidental congressman” whose only crime was being an ordinary citizen elected in extraordinary circumstances. Bentivolio was a “grassroots” politician if ever there was one, but Ronna, along with the rest of the Establishment, decided it was time to knock off a Republican incumbent. (No issue with Bentivolio’s voting record was ever cited, of course.)

Her record consists of backing campaigns (selectively, as we have seen) and holding party offices. These are easy things to do when your grandfather was our governor.

McDaniel has never held elected office, so we have no basis for separating campaign oratory from grounding principles that would be put into effect. She has never led an issue advocacy campaign.

She was not elected by a state delegation in convention assembled, but by the state central committee, to her post as National Committeewoman. She had no “grassroots vetting” process then.

We have no record of substance to demonstrate that Ronna Romney McDaniel’s overtures to the grassroots are anything more than campaign rhetoric.

We are told, Look! She has chosen Jeff Sakwa for co-chair! He’s definitely with the grassroots!

The cochair is subordinate to the chair, just as the Vice President is subordinate to the President, so it doesn’t matter; and in the same manner as a Vice President’s true purpose is as a running mate, an individual to bring otherwise lost factions out to vote for the President, that a perceived “grassroots” candidate is tapped to run for co-chair is an admission of her problems with that area.

But that aside, what qualifies Jeff Sakwa as a grassroots candidate? He has never held elected office of any kind.

His record consists of twice losing races for MSU Board of Regents. That’s it.

He too has no record to back up the rhetoric.

But Sakwa is irrelevant. If elected, Ronna Romney McDaniel calls the shots, which is to say the Establishment calls the shots.

The fact is as plain as day: The Establishment is pushing Ronna Romney McDaniel on the party.

With no record whatsoever of standing up to the Establishment, Ronna Romney McDaniel expects us to believe she is one of us.

The question is simply this: are we gullible enough too believe it?

Roland Bell is a pseudonym. In the world of politics where there are consequences for not “going along to get along,” anonymity is sometimes the only option.

Posted from Roland Bell email by @JLenardDetroit
support Norm Hughes for MIGOP Chair
@NormForChair http://www.normforchair.com

FROM: CLOSE THE PRIMARY
(just 1 reason why I’m supporting @NormForChair)

From: CLOSE THE PRIMARY
(just ONE of the reasons I am supporting Norm Hughes for MIGOP Chair)

Alert For Grassroots Conservatives!

This week Lansing politicians passed a bill for another Open Primary in Michigan. Unfortunately, they are dishonest and call the bill a Closed Primary. The fact remains that it isn’t possible to close a primary in Michigan without party registration, and this bill does not include party registration.

If you are opposed to Democrats trying to steal our primary elections like happened in Mississippi and across Michigan for the past few cycles, please consider the following action items:

1) Tell your legislators to stop perpetuating the lie regarding their Open Primary bill. Let them know that you don’t want Democrats voting in our primaries, and that you don’t appreciate the dishonesty they are showing by lying and referring to this as a Closed Primary.

Contact a GOP House Member

Contact a GOP Senate Member

2) Vote for State Committee Members this weekend who won’t perpetuate the lie put forward by the legislature and instead will support a closed process. Since the legislature passed the Open Primary bill this week the only options State Committee has are Caucuses like Iowa, a Party run Primary like in South Carolina, or a State Convention like in 1988.

3) It is not accurate to say that a party run primary would cost the party money because the party can charge the campaigns to participate. In Iowa they charge for the list, and in South Carolina they charge for ballot access. Therefore, it doesn’t need to cost the party anything.

Please help stop the lie, and stop the Open Primary, and instead support a closed process that doesn’t allow Democrats to vote.

Please also ONLY vote for candidates for Michigan Republican State Committee who will support closing the process from Democrats voting – regardless of the legislature choosing to waste $10 million on an open primary that doesn’t have any role in allocating delegates to the National Convention.

This message sent to @jlenarddetroit by [email protected]
Close the Primary
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Grand Rapids, MI 49503