- Retired military officer (LTCOL, USAF, ) and Top Gun Vietnam fighter pilot
- Retired airline pilot (Senior Captain, American Airlines)
- MBA from Central Michigan University, BA from Calvin College
- Consistently ranked as one of the most conservative state legislators in Michigan during his 6 year tenure as a state representative (Consistently ranking above seatmate Justin Amash)
- Never once supported a tax increase of any kind while in office (The irony of his house seat replacement, FINO, CINO, RINO Rob Verheulan being the primary on the proposed "MI Internet Tax" is Fodder for a future blog)

The platform Dave Agema ran on:(From his April 2012 email announcement)

My tenure as a state legislator is almost done, and now I'm looking to become active in recruiting other constitutional conservatives to run for office, and to grow the Michigan Republican Party with more conservative leaders and activists.  By definition, the Republican Party is the "rule of law" party, and I think that we are best served by reaching out to those groups and grassroots activists who seek to protect, defend, and restore our country to the intent and original meaning of our Charters of Freedom. I'm running for this position at the May 19th MIGOP State Convention and I'd like your support for my campaign.  I make five pledges to you:

    To Work hard for the election of more constitutional conservatives at all levels. I will work hard to elect good conservatives like Representative Tom McMillin, Representative Mike Shirkey, and others who put Constitutional Conservatism first.

    To Side with more conservative members of the Republican National Committee.  There are often battles within the RNC on conservative issues such as immigration.  I will vote 100% conservative and side with conservatives even if we are in the minority, like I have done in the House of Representatives.  Conservatism comes before pressure from party leaders.

    I Will not work as a paid political consultant while in a party office.  I think it is inappropriate for party officials to be consulting or lobbying on political issues.  I saw enough of that in Lansing and with my experience with National Popular Vote.

    I will oppose National Popular Vote with every bone in my body. I think Saul Anuzis is a nice guy.  I get along with him well.  He came to me and asked me to support National Popular Vote.  I assumed that if such a well-known party leader was asking me to support something with the party apparatus, it was something that I should look into.  So I traveled with him to Washington DC, studied the issue, and initially was persuaded.  I learned that he was a paid consultant for National Popular Vote and there might have been more than meets the eye.  Therefore, I found it necessary to study the issue some more and quickly realized that National Popular Vote was not the right direction for our state nor our country.  I strongly oppose National Popular Vote.

    The Michigan Dele-Gate fiasco was wrong.  I agreed with former Attorney General Mike Cox that what was done to Rick Santorum was wrong and was not helpful to anyone.

Despite multiple Dirty tricks and attacks by the establishment, over the 5 weeks leading up to the convention. Despite a well moneyed and organized Convention incumbent campaign. Dave Agema won the Delegate vote with an overwhelming margin of Victory of just under 70%.

    Dave Agema:  1,467 votes ≈ 69.068%
    Saul Anuzis:  639 votes ≈ 30.085%
    G. J. LaRouche:  18 votes ≈ 0.847%

District-by-district, Mr. Agema WON  every single district.

    CD-01: 81.675%
    CD-02: 83.696% (Agema's home district)
    CD-03: 88.043% (Agema's second Home)
    CD-04: 74.566%
    CD-05: 68.224%
    CD-06: 60.248%
    CD-07: 50.568%
    CD-08: 65.979% (Anuzis' home district)
    CD-09: 68.794%
    CD-10: 55.978%
    CD-11: 66.829%
    CD-12: 71.296%
    CD-13: 59.524%
    CD-14: 60.606%
The aftermath:

  Despite his overwhelming victory, the character assassination of Mr. Agema , and that of his supporters began almost immediately and continues to this day. A small vocal minority of establishment GOP activists have continued a campaign, with the help and support of Psuedo Conservative media pundits (Ken Braun, Kathy Hoekstra) Left wing Progressive media(Huffington post, The Bridge,)  and organizations. (Change.org, Log cabin republicans)

  The attacks began in earnest last spring. Coinciding with what in my opinion is the real Target of the amoral wing of the MIGOP.

Dave Agema is considered a leader in the RNC conservative caucus where there only used to be a handful of members in this caucus, They are now over 100 (a clear majority of the 168-member committee). This committee is made up of  members of the RNC who are far more aligned with Tea Party values than many may realize. Solomon Yue, the National Committeeman from Oregon, co-founded the Republican National Conservative Caucus. This is a large bloc of voters within the RNC that is strongly aligned with Tea Party objectives. Mr. Yue, working with Suzanne Gallagher, the new Chair of the Oregon Republican Party, will be advancing a resolution at the April meeting of the RNC that will encourage each state party organization to work with Tea Party groups to conduct joint candidate recruitment.

" The RNC stood Unanimously with Agema's core Values Resolution which was passed out of committee unanimously and brought to the floor for the full RNC vote, where the voice vote was unanimous as well.  Dave felt this was important to distinguish Republicans from the democrat platform in order to show a vast difference between us and the democrats (the full text of all adopted resolutions is here). In short this resolution reaffirmed:

    That our rights come from God - remember that the democrats tried to remove God from their national platform.
    That we remain committed to the sanctity of life - the democrats favor abortion, followed by infanticide if the child survives the abortion attempt.
    That we will not tolerate further infringement on the second amendment - the democrats want to infringe on the second amendment rights of Law abiding citizens.
    That marriage is properly defined as being between one man and one woman - the democrats oppose traditional marriage.
    The value of legal immigration, but remain opposed to illegal immigration - the democrats favor amnesty.

Five dramatic differences, five reasons to vote Republican, and five reasons our base will stay with us and vote for us. Too many have said there is little difference between the two parties; this ought to help draw that line a little more clearly.
As you may recall, Agema  ran for the RNC because he was of the opinion that the party has been continually drifting to the left, and that we need to reverse this trend and pull it back to the right. Agema's goal is to get constitutional, fiscal, and moral conservatives elected, and to return the Republican Party back to its founding philosophy. He stands on these principles. As former Congressman Colonel Allan West said at the Los Angeles meeting, "When it comes to principles we plant our feet like a rock." Those who stand for nothing, fall for anything.

 Republican National Committeeman Dave Agema issued the following statement in response:

    "Social Conservatives in recent weeks were disheartened by the rhetoric coming out of the Growth and Opportunity Project with regard to moderating our position on gay marriage.  Simply put, if the party moderated its stance then many of our voters and social conservative leaders would have left the party.

    We responded by bringing significant attention to this important issue and ultimately passing a resolution at the RNC that re-confirmed our party platform in favor of marriage being defined as being between a man and a woman.

    I am pleased with our success in the face of unrelenting criticism from the left and want to thank national social conservative leaders who made their voices heard loud and clear in this process.

    I hope that we can all now move forward and talk about other issues now that we have reconfirmed that our party supports traditional marriage.  

Almost Immediately attacks began in Earnest:

At the May MRP 2013 SPRING TRAINING CONFERENCE and State committee meeting, the previous weeks calls for censure and condemnation of Committeeman Agema went unheeded. Openly Gay activist Dennis Lennox led the failed charge.

 Ironically Dennis himself was Forced to resign from a political office for charges of fraud. He also faced a Criminal charge relating to fraudulent use of funds in that circumstance. Dennis also has a history of making Fraudulent charges against those he opposes in the political arena, Ironically calling a political opponent a child molester, and falsely outing him as Gay.

Dennis was also one of the stars of a viral video removing Rick Santorum signs prior to the 2012 primary. Santorum was seen by many as the standard bearer for the Social Conservatives at the time.

Another key player in the attacks on Agema is Paul Welday, who tried to gain traction at the last State committee meeting on a proposal to Censure. Paul has a history of attacking Social Conservative Leaders, including a July 2010 attack on Phyllis Schlafly. . Paul also has ties to CAIR, another group that has coordinated in past attacks on Agema, for his support of an ALAC bill while in the http://www.rightmichigan.com/story/2012/5/26/121834/660.

The end result of the week long attacks in the press by a tiny force within the GOP who launched an organized attack on Dave Agema, calling for his censure were:
Paul Welday retracted any motion for censure of Dave. With the help of Dennis on the Friday before the Saturday meeting, a petition was passed around, and they could not garner enough support to get it on the agenda of their first committee of choice. They then attempted to bring it to the Policy committee, where it again failed to garner enough support to even make the agenda.

There is no record or evidence, other than MR Welday's obvious disdain, that it was ever made in the first place.

Dennis Lennox, Leon Droelet, and other accusers appeared to be AWOL from the proceedings, if they were there they were quiet and out of sight.
They obviously prefer to limit their attacks to those they can coordinate with the Liberal press machine and far left organizations.
After being on the Agenda to give his report as Committeeman, Dave was first removed, then added back in.(A clerical error in the printed agenda according to the GOP Chair BS.)

Dave gave, as usual, a resounding speech, updating us on the RNC actions of the past year, and affirming, along with the RNC's Unanimous Pledge, to stand for the 5 key Principle planks  of the Party mentioned above, which I maintain are the REAL Targets of the Amoral Caucus of the MIGOP.

The repeated failures have not slowed the attackers. Agema has been called a " Grandville Dragon, Nazi Sympathizer, Racist, Sexist, Bigot, Homophobe, and multiple other names.

  The most recent attack exemplifies the complete lack of facts needed for the Amorality critics to attack AGEMA. After Thursdays State of the State address, where Governor Snyder made an opening comment "Publicly tonight, I'd like to make a call to all citizens of Michigan to ask us have a greater degree of civility and respect to others of different backgrounds and different views."

With the past year having seen the mob destruction of a tent on capitol grounds, multiple assaults,a warning of `There will be blood' on the House floor, and countless death threats against multiple Conservative and Tea Party  activists involved in the FTW battle, many thought they understood what Snyder meant.

Norm Hughes commented  "Snyder called for "a greater degree of civility" in politics." I thought the Governor was talking about the union goons who beat up, pushed, shoved, yelled at, used bull horns in the ears and swore at folks who wanted labor freedom, slashing their tents, stealing their heaters and propane tanks, knocking over coffee urns and hot dog carts, keying a work truck and shooting the electrical contractor in SE Michigan, etc. I thought he might have been talking about a plethora of Medicaid expansion lobbyists who were so rude and nasty against those who want less government and less debt for their children and grandchildren. I was wondering why he waited so long to speak up."

Another Conservative Activist and friend Michael Vickory Wrote in a recent blog: "Perhaps Governor Snyder should recall that in the recent past there have been attacks on those that may not agree with him or his policies by elected officials in his own party - attacks on which Governor Snyder has stood mute.

When a constituent and broadcaster Brian Sommerfield had the "audacity" to question Senator Howard Walker on his Medicaid expansion vote and referred to Walker as a weak Republican Senator Howard Walker stated publicly "screw you dude". Are these the comments that foster a "greater degree of civility and respect to others of different backgrounds and different views."? Where was the Governor on this one?

Or in a related issue Senator Howard Kahn had the unmitigated gall to have t-shirts with the words "Screw You Dude" emblazoned on them and handed them out to other lawmakers during the Leadership Conference on Mackinaw Island. Is this the "greater degree of civility" he was talking about ? (An Aside note, Dennis had his own explanation for the rant.)

Perhaps Governor Snyder was referring to Senator Randy Richardville. When a TEA Party activist stated that maybe we should vote Democrat in the next election because the Republicans voted more like Democrats on Medicaid expansion in Michigan Richardville said that the "TEA Party can "go home and play with themselves". Is this the "respect to others of different backgrounds and different views."

The Amorality activists quickly attempted to correct the record. Snyder's call for civility and cooperation was instead in their minds a direct attack on Dave Agema (Despite his denials to the contrary.) MLIVE, Kathy hoekstra, Ken Braun, and others jumped on the bandwagon, both before and after Snyder Publicly denied the allegations in an interview.

Dave Agema has been the leader in pushing the Republican Platform in MI, and Nationally, while at the same time Pushing the concept that Principles matter.

Dave Agema is considered a leader in the RNC conservative caucus where there only used to be a handful of members in this caucus, They are now over 100 (a clear majority of the 168-member committee).The RNC stood Unanimously with Agema's core Values Resolution was passed out of committee unanimously and brought to the floor for the full RNC vote, where the voice vote was unanimous as well. They felt this was important to distinguish us from the democrat platform in order to show a vast difference between us and the democrats . Obviously the establishment GOP sees the inclusion of morality in the platform as a threat to their real agenda of Ever larger Government!

The real focus of the Amoral GOP is the exclusion of any type of morality or traditional values within the RNC platform. While some Fiscal Conservatives may see some credence in this argument, Remember that Paul Welday and the establishment GOp also supported Medicaid expansion, Film Credits, MEDC, Film credits, and Countless other Crony Fiscal programs. Once the Social Conservatives are purged, from the party, they will focus on anyone else that opposes their Crony Business pursuits.

I am eagerly awaiting the outcry when the Amoral wing of the GOP hears that Reince Priebus agrees with Agema on Core principles.

In an unprecedented show of opposition to abortion, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is delaying the start of the party's annual winter meeting so he and other committee members can join the March for Life on the Mall.