Mitt Romney is announcing his long-coming official 2012 presidential bid on a New Hampshire farm today. A metaphor for the Romney candidacy, the announcement will look good– all rolling hills, blue skies, tractors and hay bales, according to the New York Times— but it will be undercut by the fact that the family farm is propped up by major federal subsidies, thinning Romney’s small-government message for those in the know.
Romney, a one-time moderate Republican who advanced health care reform as governor of Massachusetts that became a prototype of the controversial national plan passed last year, has been attacked for months on the Tea Party right. Those attacks will now increase and are being led today by the Western Representation political action committee founded by high-profile failed Alaska Tea Party Senate candidate Joe Miller. The group unveiled a campaign today to hobble the Romney run.
“On issues like gun rights, gay rights, abortion, immigration, and health care, Romney has flipped more than John Kerry flopped,” Miller says in a release. “We’re committed to making sure Mitt Romney spends 2012 in his home state of Massachusetts, or whatever state he’s calling home today,because conservatives deserve a better choice than Mitt Romney.”
Romney has been the de facto frontrunner for nearly half a year in a GOP field of official and unofficial presidential candidates that has so far failed to garner much enthusiasm.
Romney led in a fairly unserious straw poll of Colorado Republicans taken at a fundraising dinner in March. He also swamped GOP presidential nominee John McCain in the 2008 Colorado GOP caucuses, taking 59 percent to McCain’s 19 percent.
Today’s release from the Western Representation PAC, however, gives a taste of the kind of primary rhetoric Romney will face in what is sure to be a grueling primary campaign.
SPARKS, NV — Western Representation PAC, one of the largest and fastest-growing conservative action groups in the country, unveiled its campaign to prevent the nomination of former Massachusetts Gov Mitt Romney for President. The Nevada-based political action committee, chaired by 2010 Republican US Senate Nominee Joe Miller, is committed to ensuring Romney is not the Republican Party’s Presidential candidate in 2012.
“In a matchup against Obama, Tea Party voters are looking for a consistent constitutional conservative,” said Miller. “We will never get behind Mitt Romney. On issues like gun rights, gay rights, abortion, immigration, and health care, Romney has flipped more than John Kerry flopped.”
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“As of right now, we’re not making an endorsement on who should be the Republican nominee,” said Executive Director Bryan Shroyer. “We just know that if Mitt Romney wins the nomination, we’ll be looking at a repeat of Bob Dole’s feckless 1996 campaign and a landslide defeat.”
Western Representation PAC… has purchased the domain name StopRomney.org and has started a Facebook group by the same name.
“We’re committed to making sure Mitt Romney spends 2012 in his home state of Massachusetts, or whatever state he’s calling home today,” said Miller, “because conservatives deserve a better choice than Mitt Romney.”
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