The movement, organized by Cindy Gamrat, who ran a successful tea party influence in Indiana, has serious flaws. One flaw that is glaringly obvious, is that many tea party organizers refuse to endorse candidates. Another flaw has to do with the rules MI4CS has written for who is eligible to take part in their process. Then there are considerations about who will speak for each tea party as votes cast in a “convention” or “straw poll” that is to take place February 25th. Yet another flaw is the sheer number of tea party activists that those votes are supposed to speak for.

I have been to tea party meetings where the tea party was strictly against declaring even voting with the GOP. The persuasion of most are that they are fiercly independent individuals with absolutely no interest in becoming water-carriers for the Republican Party. I have been to other tea party meetings where the “leaders” are not only happy to endorse for the most conservative GOP pick, but are also working within the Republican Party to change it’s moderate focus.

Different tea party focuses show the great diversity of the voters of Michigan. This is a good thing. However, since MI4CS is an organization whose sole purpose is to vet and annoint one conservative candidate in the Senate race, to which all participating would adhere to and fight for from February till August, it seems to me that two people from each of 55 tea parties is too small a sampling.

We have a primary in August here in Michigan, that will sufficiently deal with who will become our nominee against Stabenow. This new organization wishes to claim coalescence behind one candidate when it will do no such thing. I’m a tea party person, but I don’t “belong” to an organized tea party. This organization wishes to declare the tea party as a political party, united for a common cause. It is antithetical to the tea party movement to allow politically connected “masterminds” to speak for sovereign individuals. We vote. We vote in a primary, where our votes count, not in a straw poll with unelected representatives of God-knows-what persuasion. It is up to each individual candidate to make their case. Obviously, Pete Hoekstra has been a Republican candidate with a well-known name for many years. If MI4CS discounts him outright, are we to assume that 7600 activists across the state won’t still vote for him come August just because MI4CS decided to control the tea party vote? C’mon. An exercise in futility could not be better exemplified.

I, and many other tea party activists across the state prefer to do our own vetting. Pete Hoekstra would be legions better than Debbie Stabenow. Stabenow is the most liberal Senator in the nation. I have some reservations about voting for Hoekstra however, since he is not the most conservative choice, but I have until August, what’s the hurry? I also have some reservations about Hoekstra not punching hard enough to defeat Stabenow, just something I learned from his last campaign for Governor of Michigan. It is my view that he could have won if he was focused and organized better. The rest of the field, except for Peter Konetchy are trying to get the MI4CS endorsement.

What has caused many people to contact me about the MI4CS vetting process is what has transpired on facebook. Some associates of the candidate who wins the most straw polls, have continuously bullied and threatened with lawsuits, some very good activists for liberty across the state because they have rightly voiced opposition to MI4CS and it’s aim. Peter Konetchy’s good name has been disparaged, because he refused to take part in MI4CS citing many of the same reservations I, and other activists have. Konetchy is a true-blue Constitutional Conservative.

It is the lack of respect for alternative views that has gotten MI4CS a bad name. Many reports of the original meeting for MI4CS in DeWitt tell that MI4CS is an “anything but Hoekstra” movement, causing Hoekstra to take notice, and thus not being very helpful in vetting him as well. The loudest voices for MI4CS are promoting Gary Glenn, a candidate that is not at all a constitutional conservative, but one who seeks to override State law with the power of the federal government. Glenn is the President of the American Family Association of Michigan, praised by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, but attacked for his views on homosexuality.

There is yet another angle to MI4CS’s vetting. Freedom Works has offered the candidate of choice money for their campaign. The camp would have to already have $500,000 to attract money from FW, and right now, only two candidates have that amount, and only one is being vetted by MI4CS, Clark Durant. So, if the tea party masterminds pick Glenn on February 25th, and he doesn’t have enough money, I guess the deal is off. Meanwhile, February 25th lands three days before the Presidential Primary in Michigan, tell me again how it’s helpful to have this distraction during what should be the most active time in Michigan for tea partiers?!

What is divisive about MI4CS is not the vetting, but the convention and adherence to the idea that 110 (possibly) people will represent upwards of 10,000 activists across the state, and one candidate will get the “tea party endorsement” of all. Sovereignty of the individual is at the heart of the tea party movement, and those who would bully, harrass, and threaten the good activists of Michigan tell of their interest in controlling and ruling over others. Grassroots conservatives would do better to look for information on all the positions of the many candidates, and make a determination of who to support come August. Politically co-opting a movement is what the establishment does, the grassroots should stay well enough away.

The man at the counter did not respond, he just looked up at the man who wore dark brown Carhartt bibs and work boots, with a Carhartt insulated jacket. The Carhartt man said, “that would have put me to work.”

I sat by the coffee maker, interested in what the Carhartt man had to say, and he came over to lean against the coffee table. I said, “I heard today that the company may forgo the federal requirements and make a line from Montana to the Gulf.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” he said, “it has to have federal oversight because it crosses the border. It was a political move,” he offered, “it just doesn’t make sense.” He looked down at his steel-toed boots, and moved his weight from one leg to the other. My husband asked him if he worked on a lot of pipelines.

“I’ve worked on them all,” he said, “all the big ones,” and began a list of names of pipelines he worked on. He was a man in his fifties, with gray/white bushy hair, probably a grandfather, with lines on his face that told of his relationship with Mother Nature, and he was clearly depressed.

“What I don’t understand,” he said, “Is why Obama shot it down. He would have gotten a lot more votes if he hadn’t.” He went on, “I haven’t worked since December 31st, 2010. I was hoping that it would have gone through.” He focused on the floor, his mouth turned to a frown, and when the man at the counter said his truck was ready, he shuffled slowly to the counter.

The Carhartt man asked the man at the counter about a mutual friend, Bob. “Well,” said the man at the counter, “Bob has another year of unemployment, so he isn’t exactly too motivated to find work right now.”

The Carhartt man paid, walked to the door, dragged his feet, his head down, and retrieved his pickup.

I wanted to tell him that Barack Obama wasn’t interested in his vote. I wanted to tell him that the company was obviously trying to put people to work by working around the Federal Government. I wanted to tell him that things may be bleak now, but perhaps in the future, we can elect a man who has his interests at heart.

But, I hadn’t the time or opportunity.

This nation is filled with men who shuffle, worry, get frustrated and angry about how the government works to hurt their ability to provide meaning to their lives. There are also men who take unemployment as a free ride, uninterested in who is paying for their vacation, leaving the worry of a job to the government who will extend their vacation.

Barack Obama has not only killed jobs in the Keystone Pipeline decision, he has killed men’s self-worth.

Ameritopia should be a text book for high school juniors and seniors across the nation, in every public school. It fills the vacuum-of-awareness of the country they live in, that could be had by an American by the time they reach 18, and are let loose from mandatory public schooling.

In a relatively short book, (only 248 pages, and 10 pages of Research Notes) Mark Levin has provided the words of philosophers and thinkers from history, showing that there is a divide in theory from Americanism and, to borrow a word from Levin’s previous book, Liberty And Tyranny, statism. He shows us how central planning “masterminds” and controlling micro-managers take away our natural, God-given rights and force us into slavery, killing our ideas, our potential and our dreams.

American Philosophy 101 rejects utopianism, perfection, equality in outcomes, big government, and class warfare, and instead focuses on the laws of nature, the goodness of the individual, the value of his labor, the influence of God, and restraint in government.

The first half of Ameritopia is a study of how the utopian views people as pawns, “ignorant masses” that need to be controlled, and uses that view as a starting point for creating rights and forcing neat outcomes. Utopianism is sold as an easy way, a promised land, a serene level, a high life. It says all you need to do to have a perfect future is to give your labor, your thoughts, your life, and your children to those who would govern you, and you’ll never have to worry again.

It’s kind of like selling your soul to the Devil.

But oh, the second half of Ameritopia, what a bold contrast! Things you know, instinctively, are written by those who would have been drawn from by the founders of this great Nation! The Spirit of America was written by Locke and Montesquieu, and observed by Tocqueville. Our founders rejected both the slavery of man and the slavery of an unrestrained government. They threw off the yoke from their would-be masters and forged a new government where they, as citizens, would be masters of their governors.

However, the utopians never give up trying to control us, and with the election of Woodrow Wilson, our nation began to stumble, being led by a man and a movement, a counter-revolution, that offers the high life, if only we give them everything we have including our selves. Mark Levin traces the words and actions of Wilson, FDR, LBJ, and now, Barack Obama, to show that their philosophy is self-centered and gluttonous for power and for control of the individual. They make laws that give them the power to take my property, that is produced with my labor, and now with Obamacare, they have my body too.

Mark points to Tocqueville’s observation that the strength of the American people was, has been even 200 years before our Constitution was adopted, and is in those of us who still comprise the majority of thought. Middle America, or regular Americans, will be the ones to beat back the utopian slave-masters. Tocqueville said, “Between the two extremes of democratic communities stands an innumerable multitude of men almost alike, who, without being exactly either rich or poor, possess sufficient property to desire the maintenance of order, yet not enough to excite envy….(they are) the natural enemies of violent commotions; their lack of agitation keeps all beneath them and above them still and secures the balance of the fabric of society.”

It is you and I who fall into this group of regular Americans who will educate ourselves and lead this nation back on it’s original path of freedom and liberty, strength and prosperity. Mark Levin has shown us where to look for the answers, strengthening our ability to persuade our fellow man, that what is good, right and true is in the hearts of most, and that we need to commit to putting our nation back in the hands of those who would restrain government and protect our God-given rights.

We haven’t much time. Mark Levin has boosted our intuitive thoughts with his educational textbook, Ameritopia. His generous gift to those of us who wish to learn and persuade could not have come at a better time. Like all good Fathers, Mark has given us a leg-up, a key to knowledge that we mightn’t have had in time for the battle of our lives. Having read Ameritopia, I know I will keep it, read it again, refer to it often and research further into the making of America, and fight those who wish to unmake it.

Thank you, Mark R. Levin. You are a gem.

Or something like that.

So the Republican establishment neatly tells us that the huge, purple, polka-dotted elephant in the room is off limits. In fact, the Romney faithful have tried to make the legislation a plus on his side against Obama, pointing out distinctions and showing how much more conservative it is than Obamacare.

Never mind that the Democrat Party’s leading healthcare adviser helped write the bill and is now perplexed at how Romney isn’t bragging about the greatness of it, complaining that though Romney tries to draw distinctions, Romneycare and Obamacare are the “same f***ing bill.” Jonathan Gruber, the foul-mouthed, quotable MIT economist, lives in an alternate universe where large government solutions actually create more jobs, and encourage entrepreneurship.

There is one distinction, however, between Romneycare and Obamacare that bothers me besides the fact that socialized medicine is, and always will be, the wrong way to go. Romneycare provides for taxpayer funded abortions.

I can imagine that any FiCons still reading this are cursing the scourge of the SoCons in their party. Too bad.

During the national debate on Obamacare in 2009 and 2010, you’ll recall a Democrat Congressman from Michigan who kept his far-left agenda a secret behind a pro-life veil. Bart Stupak was my congressman, and he was often touted as a ‘blue dog’ or a conservative Democrat. He adamantly stated many times that he was not a blue dog, but he still kept the label around for re-election’s sake.

In the fall of 2009, Stupak started making a big deal about how he was not going to let Obamacare pass with taxpayer-funded abortions, no way in hell. He repeated the mantra, “no taxpayer-funded abortions,” in every town hall event and telephone conference and press advisory and appearances on what became daily news spots. Conservatives came out in approval of Democrat Bart Stupak, the hero of conservatism, one of the few Democrats who would stand on principle. But it became even more than that. He said that he was “not going to let Obamacare pass with abortion language in it,” so many times, that he ended up fooling America into believing that he was the man who would stop Obamacare from becoming law. Those of us who watched him at home knew his argument was a means to an end, a way to change the subject of the abhorrent nature of the entire 2,000+ page bill and all it’s possible ramifications, not to mention the way it was rammed through. In the end, Stupak held his press conference on a Sunday afternoon waving an Executive Order and getting his last few moments of fame. He became a sell-out to people whose side he was never on, and they finally saw it clearly. All because of taxpayer-funded abortions. Stupak announced his retirement less than a month later.

If America was keen on taxpayer-funded abortions, the Stupak saga would have never played out.

Now, as a Republican, I am supposed to look past the fact that not only did Mitt Romney use Democrat advisers and sign Romneycare into law, he also ensured taxpayer-funded abortions. Not one single Republican in the nation’s congress voted for Obamacare or taxpayer-funded abortions. Do a little googling and you’ll find that Romneycare was financed by federal tax dollars, implemented an individual mandate and puts the onus on Massachusetts businesses to pay the government if they don’t provide healthcare at the workplace.

It’s only been two years since the nation roiled over Obamacare, a lot of that sounds awfully familiar. But since Romney backers want to ‘draw distinctions’ in an attempt to clarify the lines between Republican and Democrat, what part of the conversation becomes a reason to vote for him in the primary?

I want to know what part of this is conservative? None of it, but the Romney backers have an answer for that too. They say the Heritage Foundation came up with it and since Heritage is conservative, there can be no question.

But I will not put my good judgement aside and listen to a third party tell me what to believe about something they can’t defend themselves. This is not about Heritage, it’s about Mitt Romney and his conservative credentials. What kind of people decide that you can’t think for yourselves, and what they tell you is all you need to know?

I do not believe that the fury of the American people in 2010 has burned out. I do not believe that the Republican establishment can be serious about winning in 2012 when their candidate of choice has to be shuffled past the conservative electorate during the primary season.

I can’t move on from Romneycare, it’s a non-starter.