Pat Dollard

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Politico:

CONCORD, N.H. – If Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney came in search of elusive Tea Party mojo, he didn’t find it here at a small Tea Party Express rally, where a few dozen conservatives sat in lawn chairs and argued about Romney’s conservative bona fides.

Romney made no attempt to out-Tea Party his conservative rival Rick Perry, and in fact the words “Tea Party” didn’t cross his lips in a stump speech that ran less than 15 minutes.

“I thought he’d pander a bit more,” remarked Jerry DeLemus, a local Tea Party leader who’d appeared before the event at an anti-Romney event organized by the Washington group FreedomWorks—a group that split with the Tea Party Express over Romney’s appearance.

Romney instead reminded the attendees at the Concord party that he’s “a business guy” and a “turnaround” specialist. He drew applause for a jab at “Obamacare” and told the crowd, “I believe in free enterprise.”

The event’s attendees were evenly divided between Romney’s supporters in blue shirts, Tea Party loyalists, and reporters, and Romney’s supporters clustered together by the entrance, sparring only occasionally with the anti-Romney contingent who brought their own signs and slogans.

“We thought all the nuts were down in Massachusetts but now we know they’re here too,” one told DeLemus’s wife, Susan, a New Hampshire state representative, she said.

One speaker, the leader of the New Hampshire chapter of the conservative group Americans for Prosperity, Corey Lewandowski, offered a challenge for Sarah Palin, who will speak to the group tomorrow.

“It is time to determine: Are you here to sell books, are you here to run for president of the United States?” he said. “If you’re not serious, get out of the way.

Romney’s supporters couldn’t have been more out of place.

Romney’s supporters hailed from a different Republican Party, said Bill Gordon, a retired software engineer from Lowden, who dressed his poodle in a blue Romney shirt.

“I want somebody’s who’s in the center who can pull people together from both sides,” he said. “We’ll tear this country apart if we swing all the way the other way – we already swung all the way left.”

New York Times:

Mitt Romney’s keynote speech Sunday night at a Tea Party Express rally in Concord, N.H., was perhaps more notable for what did not happen — there were no fiery clashes with Tea Party protesters, or angry hecklers — than for what did — Mr. Romney delivered a lively version of his standard stump speech.

“I love this great land, I know we face extraordinary challenges, and I happen to believe that career politicians got us into this mess, and the career politicians can’t get us out of this mess,” Mr. Romney said. “It will take someone who understands how the private economy works because he’s worked in the private economy, and I have. I’m a business guy.”

Mr. Romney has never been a favorite of Tea Party supporters, who dislike the health care overhaul he carried out as governor of Massachusetts. And when he was announced as a speaker for the Tea Party Express national bus tour, FreedomWorks, a libertarian advocacy group that has fostered the growth of the Tea Party movement, withdrew in protest.

Along with a coalition of a dozen other Tea Party and liberty groups, FreedomWorks also organized a protest before Mr. Romney’s speech Sunday. But attendance at the protest was sparse, drawing a little more than a dozen supporters.

“We don’t want him portrayed as New Hampshire’s Tea Party candidate,” said Jerry DeLemus, chairman of the Granite State Patriots Liberty P.A.C.

The Romney camp, however, came prepared for the protesters, showing up with dozens of Romney supporters in blue “Romney” shirts, and carrying blue and white Romney signs. When the candidate arrived at the rally in Rollins Park, they surrounded him hooting and clapping, and crowded around as he took the lectern, first standing and then sitting at the base of the stage. (Flipper Mitt, a man dressed in a dolphin costume passing out “Mitt Flops,” also managed to snag a front-row seat.)

Mr. Romney, who was preceded by his wife, Ann, emphasized his business background and years in the private sector, but also hit some themes popular with the Tea Party movement — namely, freedom.

“I believe in America,” Mr. Romney said. “I believe in our freedoms, our political freedom. I believe in our economic and personal freedoms. I believe in free enterprise, I believe in capitalism.”

He also assailed President Obama on the new report that showed zero job growth last month: “Look, a shutout is O.K. in baseball — it’s not good when you’re talking jobs,” he said.

FreedomWorks organizers circulated a seven-page memo detailing parts of Mr. Romney’s record that they said were incompatible with Tea Party principles. The memo drew mostly on Mr. Romney’s actions as governor of Massachusetts, focusing heavily on the healthcare legislation that he introduced in the state that conservatives criticize as being similar to Mr. Obama’s federal healthcare legislation.

“When it comes to less government, which the Tea Party stands for, how could you possibly explain that with Romneycare?” said Tim Carter, a co-leader of the Lakes Region Tea Party in New Hampshire, referring to the term some conservatives have adopted for Mr. Romney’s healthcare legislation. “It doesn’t even compute.”

Though he has firmed up his conservative stances, some Republicans view him is a flip-flopper, and until recently, Mr. Romney has made very little concerted effort to reach out to Tea Party groups.

“It seems to me that Mitt Romney is treating this as a photo opp to check the box and to get the photo opp that he’s cool with the Tea Party — and he’s not cool with the Tea Party,” said Adam Brandon, a spokesman for FreedomWorks. “All of our activists are pretty peeved he would even try to embrace the Tea Party message.”

Mr. Brandon added: “I think the only reason is because he’s slipping in the polls. He’s ignored us until this point, he’s ignored all our issues.”

In recent days Mr. Romney has been ramping up his Tea Party outreach. Last week the Romney campaign announced that he would be attending a candidate forum over Labor Day weekend in Columbia, S.C., an event he had previously planned to skip. Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, the forum’s host, is popular with social conservatives and Tea Party groups.

Jennifer Horn, the founder of We the People, a New Hampshire Tea Party group, also said Mr. Romney was the first candidate to accept an invitation to participate in a series of town-hall-style meetings her group is planning this fall.

Mr. Romney told Foster’s, a New Hampshire newspaper, last month that he believed he could win the support of Tea Party voters.

“I want to appeal to the Tea Party voters,” Mr. Romney told the paper’s editorial board. “I don’t know what folks here in New Hampshire would say, but my guess is most Tea Partiers, or a lot of them, would support my candidacy.”