The tea party may never trust Mitt Romney’s conservative credentials, but tea party group FreedomWorks is hoping that if Romney does make it to the White House, his political leanings may not matter because all he’ll have to do is sign the agenda that the conservative House and Senate send to his desk.
In a sit down with The Daily Caller, FreedomWorks Chief Operating Office and Treasurer Ryan Hecker, and Executive Director Russ Walker, explained that they were focused on their “Senate strategy” — getting strong conservatives into the Senate who can work with the House conservatives to drive an agenda, regardless of who is in office. (RELATED: Full coverage of the tea party movement)
“The smaller-government movement has always looked for the man or the woman on the white horse to come in, take the presidency and move good policy. And the truth is, you can’t do it without a caucus within the Senate and the House that’s willing to move that same policy,” Walker said. “And our perspective is that if we build that caucus … that they will push good policy to the president regardless of who’s [in the White House].”
“My hope is that fifty years from now, someone is going to write a biography and it’s going to be known that Romney was one of the most conservative presidents in American history, and a conservative hero,” Hecker echoed. “And it’s going to be because a conservative Senate put bills in front of him that he signed.”
He joked that fifty years from now, Romney, who is currently being slammed for his political flip-flops, would have “a monument in D.C. or something because of his conservative bona fides.”
Nonetheless, tea partiers in general, and FreedomWorks in particular, remains largely unenthused by a Romney presidency. Spokesman Adam Brandon told TheDC on Wednesday that if the race looked like it was going to end in a brokered convention, they would look for an alternative candidate to Romney to get behind.