Club For Growth, the ultra-conservative small government group, hasn’t exactly been Mitt Romney’s biggest fan. Their president, Chris Chocola, has called Romney’s tax plan “just keeping the status quo.” Their official white paper on the candidate concludes that he “should admit that RomneyCare is a failure, and soon.” And yet, the group has been rallying to his defense all month as Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry attack Bain Capital for laying off workers.
“We are not Romney defenders by any means,” Chocola told TPM in an interview. “If anything, [Bain] may be helping Romney consolidate support. We’re still not endorsing or defending Romney, but when someone is falsely attacked we got to step it up.”
It’s an ironic feature of the Bain story. Gingrich and Perry both favor a flat tax, which is a far, far, more radical conservative proposal than Romney’s economic plan. And yet right as they’re hitting the home stretch of the primary, anti-tax groups are compelled to disavow their campaigns.
“[Pro-Newt Super PAC founder] Rick Tyler and New Gingrich are, I think, universally discredited by Republicans in their betrayal of Bain and capitalism,” Chocola said. “Our message to Gingrich and his Super PAC, is you know, go look at our website…there’s a whole bunch to attack Romney on, but Bain’s not it. There are a lot of things that conservatives don’t like about Romney, but his business career isn’t one of them.”
In addition to Chocola, Republican anti-tax guru Grover Norquist recently bashed Gingrich’s Romney attacks on Bloomberg TV. “It’s a bad idea, it’s bad economics, it’s bad politics, and as they say in the business, the worst thing about it is that it didn’t work,” Norquist said. “Each of the candidates is better off promoting what they’ve accomplished.”
Despite the recent populist blow up within the GOP race, Chocola said he wasn’t worried that Gingrich and Perry signaled that the GOP base might be vulnerable to wedge attacks regarding private equity, Wall Street, or inequality.
“I think this is just an angry candidate lashing out with patently false accusations,” he said. “I don’t really see a ripple effect on other issues. There isn’t really any movement in the GOP or among conservatives on what free market capitalism is.”
