Campaign ’12
Romney’s Tea Party Problem
He may be the best fi nanced GOP candidate, and leading in the polls, but grass-roots groups are not on board.
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By David A. Patten T
HE MYRIAD TEA PARTY groups agree on big issues — lower taxes,
smaller government — but
squabble like siblings over just about everything else. That said, tea party leaders tell News max there’s one thing that could bring them together next year: Mitt Romney. As in, “any- body but Romney.”
s, but bout
party one
endorsement unless Romney con- fesses his “Romneycare” plan was a big mistake.)
If the former Massachusetts gov- ernor fares better than expected in Iowa, trounces his more conservative opponents in New Hampshire, and uses his huge fundraising machine to rout the GOP fi eld, look for grass- roots groups to fi nd one other thing they agree on: stopping Romney. Of course, disenchantment with
Romney among grass-roots types, which mostly stems from the poli- cies he adopted in Massachusetts, is far from universal. Romney already has won the endorsement of Utah GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a popular tea party fi gure. And conservatives tend to forget that tea party cham- pion Sen. Jim DeMint endorsed him in 2008. (DeMint’s camp now sug- gests there will be no repeat of that
30 NEWSMAX / SEPTEMBER 2011
While there are always exceptions with the tea parties, grass-roots con- servatives have made it clear Romney just isn’t their cup of tea.
In June, for example, the conser- vative FreedomWorks organization invited 150 tea party leaders to a sem- inar and asked which GOP candidate they would support for president. Romney received a total of one vote. One grass-roots group, Western Representation PAC, has launched “Stop Romney,” an anybody-but- Romney campaign. The chairman of Western, Joe Miller, is the Alaska senate candidate who nearly beat incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the midterms. The campaign’s primary objective: Mobilize con- servatives to beat Romney in New
TEA LEAVES Romney will have a diffi cult time winning over tea party groups (above, protesting Obamacare in D.C.) due to his “Romneycare” plan.
Hampshire, thereby starving his
campaign of any early momentum. Miller told ABC News: “We will never get behind Mitt Romney. On issues like gun rights, gay rights, abortion, immigration, and health- care, Mitt Romney has fl ipped more than [Democratic Senator] John Kerry fl opped.”
The polls support the notion that tea party conservatives are under- whelmed when it comes to Romney. A July Public Policy Polling survey of likely New Hampshire primary voters showed Romney with a mod- est, 25 percent to 18 percent lead over Rep. Michele Bachmann. But among self-identifi ed tea party members, Bachmann won going away, 53 to 39. A national Washington Post-ABC poll also found “tepid” support for Romney among tea party activ- ists. Florida tea party leader Everett
ROMNEY/GEORGE FREY/GETTY IMAGES / PROTESTERS/NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
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