Tea party conservatives are fearful that Mitt Romney could harm the Republican Party brand that the movement has sought to recast post-George W. Bush, a top FreedomWorks staffer tells TPM. He concedes that the reason conservatives haven’t rallied behind one of his opponents is because they see no clear right-wing alternative who’s also electable.
“If you nominate a Romney who is sort of a moderate and doesn’t seem to believe in anything — he’s not authentic — that can do a lot of damage to the brand of the Republican Party, which we are trying to rehabilitate,” said Brendan Steinhauser, the director of federal and state campaigns of FreedomWorks, the 1.5 million member Dick Armey-led group that has played a key role in shifting the Republican Party to the right.
“If he gets nominated he could be like George W. Bush or John McCain and disappoint voters who are starting to warm to Republicans,” Steinhauser told TPM.
Other conservatives have publicly aired similar grievances. CNN contributor and RedState editor Erick Erickson lamented in an epic November post that the if the former Massachusetts governor is the GOP nominee, “conservatism dies.”
Romney will not take conservatives seriously, he argued, and most Republicans will get behind him out of party loyalty, while those who don’t will be “alienated, blamed, and made the scapegoat for the failures of the establishment GOP.”
As for FreedomWorks, the group will “probably not” endorse a candidate in the GOP primaries because there’s no clear alternative who’s electable, Steinhauser said. Its biggest priority this year is to help Republicans win control of the Senate, ideally with more right-wingers.
If you take a look at Newt Gingrich’s favorability figures, you’ll see that tea partiers are caught between a rock and a hard place. Newt’s negatives are so high he’s expected be a drag on the “down-ticket” races for the House and Senate. And while Romney doesn’t currently seem as lethal for those, they’d have to hold their noses to get over his “moderate” odor.
Romney and Gingrich are locked in a neck-and-neck battle for the Florida primary.
Tea partiers see Gingrich as more authentic and “more likely to push for conservative policy change” than Romney, Steinhauser explained, but they have deep “frustrations” with the former House speaker. They remain concerned about his past mutability on issues like the Wall Street bailout, climate change, health care mandates, and past support for establishment Republican candidates over tea party insurgents.
The FreedomWorks staffer said the base’s dilemma is that Romney may be better at winning independents while Gingrich could boost conservative turnout.
“The good news is that Romney and Gingrich have become so much more like us,” he said. “We’re moving these guys toward us, the question is can we trust if they actually get elected that they’ll push our agenda?”
Sahil Kapur
Sahil Kapur is a congressional reporter for TPM. He previously covered politics and public policy for numerous publications including The Guardian and The Huffington Post. He can be reached at sahil [at] talkingpointsmemo.com.
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