Just days after news reports indicated that FreedomWorks would use its sphere of influence in 2012 to prevent former Massachusetts governor and presumed 2012 front-runner Mitt Romney from winning the Republican presidential nomination, the Tea Party organization’s president and CEO Matt Kibbe was hesitant to fully unleash on him.
“I wouldn’t actually say that FreedomWorks is targeting Mitt Romney,” Kibbe told The Daily Caller. “Frankly, we’re looking at everyone,” he said, while expressing frustration with the entire field.
The FreedomWorks strategy, according to Kibbe, is less focused on the candidates themselves and more focused on issues. When asked about former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman — considered more liberal than many other candidates considering a run for the White House — the FreedomWorks leader passed up the opportunity to attack him, simply saying, “We haven’t looked at him that much yet … but we’re going to.”
“We’re looking at all candidates and trying to measure them by some objective standard,” he told TheDC. For Romney, that may be bad news.
“Obviously health care is a fundamental issue, particularly if you plan on successfully debating President Obama,” said Kibbe. “And looking at Romneycare, it’s very difficult to figure out how you get to an acceptable Tea Party standard while still defending an individual mandate.”
In 2012, health care will be an obvious area attack on President Obama for any of the Republican candidates. But many conservative voters see Romney standing on the wrong side of the issue given the health care plan he pushed through in Massachusetts.
Moreover, the last time Romney had a national audience and opportunity to explain his health care plan, he chose to defend an individual mandate on the state level, when what Tea Partiers wanted to hear was an apology.
Could Romney have redeemed himself if he had renounced his Massachusetts health care plan? “That’s hard to say,” said Kibbe. “It would have had to be credible.”
“Of the two unhappy options for him, the best was to say ‘I made a mistake. I don’t support an individual mandate,’” added Kibbe. “And I understand the dilemma, but [there are] two criteria. One is policy — where do you stand on issues — and then electability.”
Almost from the beginning, Romney and the Tea Party have had a tense relationship.
In 2010, Romney publicly critiqued the Tea Party by warning it not to form a third party and run candidates in a general election.
“If we go in the direction of dividing our conservative effort in the general elections, why we’ll just basically turn the country over to Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid and that would be very sad indeed,” said Romney at the time.
Around that same time, Tea Party Express President Amy Kremer was calling Romney’s heath care plan “absolutely unacceptable.”
Nonetheless, two polls this spring showed Romney polling strong among Tea Party voters. In March, a Pew Research polls showed that Romney was the first choice for 24 percent of Tea Party backers. In the same poll, Ron Paul received 13 percent and Sarah Palin received 12 percent.
In April, an ABC News/Washington Post poll revealed that against President Obama, 70 percent of those who identified as a Tea Partier said they would vote for Romney. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin, both considered to be Tea Party favorites, came in with 60 and 61 percent, respectively.
But one thing is for sure: Romney and the Tea Party are keeping each other at arm’s length. But at the same time, grassroots activists aren’t ready to get behind any candidate just yet.
“It is too soon for the Tea Party to decide who they will get behind,” Florida-based activist Billie Tucker told TheDC. “At this point, no one candidate will get the backing of all the Tea Parties across this country yet.”
“It’s a frustrating thing for the Tea Party,” Kibbe told TheDC. “The current field is a little frustrating.”
But some view the Tea Party’s angst over the current field as a bad sign for the Republican Party’s prospects in 2012 — especially if a strong Tea Party candidate does not emerge. “For the GOP, this is not the way to beat Obama,” Chip Felkel, a South Carolina-based public affairs strategist, told TheDC. “[That] could lead to a long, drawn-out primary battle and even a brokered convention.”
It may be too early to predict just how the Tea Party will influence 2012, but it’s clear that activists will be following the 2010 strategy of making races about the establishment versus the movement — another seemingly bad factor for Romney.
Despite the rocky start to the 2012 primary season, Kibbe still expressed some optimism, though it was couched in a warning. “I feel like the Republican establishment has come our way,” said Kibbe. “They don’t want train wrecks like they had in Delaware, which was the doing of the Republican establishment thinking [Mike] Castle was good enough when he was utterly unacceptable.”
Amanda Seitz contributed to this report.
