Tea Party Leader Rejects Romney, asks “Is it too late to switch?”

By Seth McLaughlin

The leader of a national tea party group suggested Monday that Republican might want to start exploring whether it is too late to replace Mitt Romney atop the party’s ticket after one of the campaign’s top advisers argued that the individual mandate in the President Obama’s health care law is not a tax.

Tea Party Nation’s Judson Phillips said Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling upholding health care reform offered Mr. Romney an opening with anti-tax advocates and the middle class — an opening that was squandered by Romney advisor Eric Fehrnstrom’s comments Monday that the former Massachusetts governor disagrees with the contention that the law is actually a huge tax increase.

“We did not like Obamacare to start with and now that the Supreme Court has called it a tax, it gave Romney the room to run straight for a touchdown,” Mr. Phillips wrote on the group’s blog. “What kind of idiots are running the Romney campaign? Instead of spiking the football and winning, the Romney campaign has just turned over the ball.”