Michigan GOP Convention: A Party and a People in Transition

Less than 24 hours after Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s historic endorsement of Donald Trump, the Michigan Republican Party (MIGOP) held its 2024 Convention, for the purpose of nominating candidates for various statewide judicial and education-related positions. Like so many other state parties, MIGOP has been in turmoil, nominally split between various factions, some of which can be described as grass-roots and some of which can be described as the donor class or the legacy party. 

Donald Trump, with his choice of J.D. Vance as Vice President, with his crafting of a brilliant new platform, and now with the support of former Democrats like RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, has put an end to those so-called categories. The now sterile distinctions between Democrat and Republican, grass-roots and establishment, left-wing vs right-wing, and big government vs little government are over. The real enemy has stepped out from behind all of its disguises and has revealed itself. It is a fascist, financier elite, now openly maneuvering to crush its opponents by any means, while unapologetically shredding our constitutional freedoms, devastating our economy, flooding us with illegal drugs, and endangering the mental and physical well-being of our children. It is the modern version of the very British Empire against which we fought for our independence over two centuries ago.

Donald Trump, with his indomitable courage and his visionary platform, is now rallying a new majority to defend our nation from this evil. What we saw at the MIGOP convention is how that works. Individuals, candidates and institutions (who may still privately cling to their own agendas), have no choice but to get in line behind Trump and the New Republican Party. MIGOP, under Pete Hoekstra (who came to the MIGOP chairmanship as the result a campaign that ran roughshod over the grassroots delegates who had taken over the party in 2023) is trumpeting Trump’s appeal to workers, Blacks, Hispanics and other minorities, and producers.

The party is sending out mailer after mailer, highlighting Trump’s platform promises (like defending Social Security) and attacking the phony Project 2025. (In a previous incarnation, Hoekstra might have been all in on Project 2025). U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers, a deep state darling who was ready to run against Trump in January 2023 and whose primary campaign was dominated by neo-con issues, was focused on Trump’s economic message in his speech to the convention. The Michigan House Republican Campaign Committee, which has been a major point of donor class control in the state, is giving legislative candidates talking points on the bread and butter economic and energy policies which characterize the Trump campaign.

(For historical reference, our movement, then known as LaRouche PAC, tried to make this the spearpoint of the 2022 midterm elections in Michigan. That effort never penetrated the donor/legacy control of the Party, or for that matter the single-issue orientation of grass-roots activists, and Michigan Republicans lost control of the State House and Senate, and left the executive branch in the hands of lunatic Democrats, who rival Kamala Harris in terms of evil banality.)

While the magnitude of this shift hasn’t been grasped by some activists who are still fighting tribal or procedural battles, most are being pulled along by the magnitude of what Trump has accomplished, even if they don’t fully understand it. Someone who does is Pastor Lorenzo Sowell, whose 180 Church President Trump visited in June, and whose speech at the RNC Convention in Milwaukee brought down the house. Pastor Sowell did it again at this convention, describing how important it was for Trump to have come to the “hood hood” in Detroit and the spiritual impact that it is having throughout the nation. He said, “And it’s not that the Republican Party needs Black people, it’s that Black people need the Republican Party…It was the Republican Party that wanted to stop the trans-Atlantic slave trade, it was the party that wanted to stop Jim Crow…How is it we have been under Democratic rule for six decades and it’s a Republican who threw us a life preserver.”  

Promethean organizers were at the convention in force, as delegates and alternates, making clear the nature of this new movement. About a 1000 copies of the “Promethean Guide to the 2024 Republican Party Platform,” were distributed. A smaller, half-page version, which highlighted the Platform’s “20 Promises” were given to key state and local leaders of the party, with the strong encouragement that they produce their own version of it to be used as the basic organizing tool over the course of the campaign. Hopefully, Chairman Hoekstra, who received a copy and agreed with the idea, will follow through and the state party will produce it in the quantities needed.

A Promethean Guide to the 2024 Republican Party Platform

The 2024 Republican Party Platform, led by Donald Trump, declares war on the old GOP, Wall St. and the D.C. establishment, embracing a new American System that places industry, workers, and infrastructure over globalism and oligarchy.

Promethean ActionPromethean Action

Throughout the convention, Promethean organizers were approached by other delegates to thank us for our leadership in the fight which succeeded in making Agenda47 the basis of the platform. We have laid the groundwork for the emergence of a New Republican Party. We must strengthen it so that it is not susceptible to sabotage by those who may have jumped on the Trump bandwagon for other purposes. That will happen when activists, whether self-defined grass roots or not, master the fundamentals of the platform, rediscover the American System which shapes it, and ensure that Donald Trump has a rock-solid and educated movement which will allow him to bring about the economic and social revival. After all, getting him and other MAGA Republicans elected is just the first step in the fight to secure the future. Actually governing is the next step.