What’s for the tea party not to like in Romney?

[mistertrickster]

Op-ed in my local paper on the day Frank was in town for a book signing ("Pity the Billionaire&quot

Dear tea party movement:

For the last few months, the world has been fascinated by your frenzied search for a presidential candidate who is not Mitt Romney. Because you found the man inauthentic, you buoyed up a string of anti-Mitts – Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich. But they were buffoons all, preposterous figures whom you rightfully changed your minds about as soon as you got to know them.

. . .


If nothing else, you in the tea party movement have spent the last three years teaching Americans that we are in a battle for the very soul of capitalism. And here comes Romney, the soul of American capitalism in the flesh. Look back over his career as a predator drone at Bain Capital: Isn’t it the exact sort of background you always insist politicians ought to have as you wave your copy of “Atlas Shrugged” in the air?

It’s true that Romney said that the bank bailouts of 2008-09 were necessary, while you regard them as a mortal sin against free-market principles. But you shouldn’t hold this against him. Any study of bank history reveals that free-marketeers have no problem doling out, or grabbing for, government money when the chips are down.

After all, President Herbert Hoover himself distributed bank bailouts in the early years of the Depression. Calvin Coolidge’s vice president, Charles Dawes, helped out in Hoover’s bailout operation, later changing hats and grabbing a big slice of the bailout pie for his own bank. Ronald Reagan’s administration rescued Continental Illinois from what was then the largest bank failure in our history.

http://www.kansas.com/2012/01/13/2173147/whats-for-the-tea-party-not-to.html

[Scootaloo]

1. They don't like him because they're told to not like him

The tea Party is easily manipulated. it's sort of their defining feature.

[customerserviceguy]

2. Here's the big question about Mitt Romney

Was he a conservative guy (his Mormon upbringing would strongly suggest that) who said whatever he needed to say to get elected to statewide office in Massachusetts, who is now simply returning to his true self? Or was he raised in a family that had money and political fame in Michigan, who became a limousine liberal perfect for Massachusetts, but willing to lie his way to the Presidency?

Clearly, they've seen how many of us feel deceived by Barack Obama, because we simply figured that he would always think the way we did, and we have only ourselves to blame for not holding him to anything during the campaign. I can't blame them for wanting to learn from our mistake.