“Romney for the most part is inaccessible,’’ said Hemingway, a Bristol resident who is chairman of the state’s Republican Liberty Caucus. “Pawlenty, I could call him right now and say, ‘Let’s have coffee.’”…
Indeed, the former Bain Capital executive projects an image that is something like a red cape to the bulls of the Tea Party: wealthy, steeped in corporate culture, a one-time moderate from Massachusetts. He defends the 2008 federal bank bailout and is despised by many conservatives for leading passage of the Massachusetts plan to provide near-universal health coverage, which served as a model for President Obama’s health care overhaul last year.
“I feel strongly — strongly — that I do not want Mitt Romney as our presidential nominee,’’ said Ted Maravelias, a Tea Party activist from Windham, N.H., who is a member of the GOP state committee and said he has been impressed with the campaign of Pawlenty, the Minnesota governor. Romney is “a fraudulent conservative. I don’t trust the guy. Be it health care, be it social issues, he’s a chameleon.’’
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