MITT-MANIA in New Hampshire!

Posted on | September 4, 2011 | 55 Comments

CONCORD, N.H.
Mitt Romney headlined tonight’s Tea Party Express rally and here are just a couple of photos:

I’ll have much, much more in a few moments.

UPDATE: More photos:

Former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer is interviewed by Da Tech Guy.

Dave Weigel interviews some local Tea Party activists who showed up to protest against Romney. 

UPDATE II: More photos:

My friend Andrea Shea King offered to take this photo.

Not everybody in the crowd succumbed to Mitt-mania.

Suffice to say, he’s immune to Mitt-mania.

This young fellow knows how to get onto my blog.

UPDATE III: Yet more photos:

A capitalist offers a fine selection of anti-Obama buttons.

A Tea Party activist tells an ABC News reporter why Mitt Romney is the spawn of Satan (I paraphrase).

My old buddy Eric Odom is traveling with the Tea Party Express.

The anti-Romney rally sponsored by FreedomWorks.

UPDATE IV: Dave Weigel, filing for Slate from the same McDonald’s where Da Tech Guy and I are working, just posted his article about the anti-Romney protesters:

“The issue with Romney is the issues,” says Jackie Bodnar, spokeswoman for FreedomWorks, the group that quit the TPX tour to protest Romney. She hands me the three pages of fliers and oppo research that everyone will be getting as they show up, with granular details about the taxes and fees and un-Tea Party things Gov. Mitt Romney supported in the ‘Aughts.
Peg Coutermarsh was one of the first to arrive. She wears a shirt with the date January 19, 2013 on it — Obama’s last day in office, if he loses — and holds a flagpole that has been signed by famous Tea Party speakers. Hermain Cain has signed it. She doesn’t want Romney to sign it.
“I’m going to support a Tea Party candidate,” she says. “Romney represents the same old, same old.”
Is she swayed at all by the polls that show Romney beating Barack Obama?
“If you read into who was polled, they were all Romney people.”
The press conference starts at 5:30, sharp. There are two dozen protesters and around 30 reporters scribbling down what they say. Andrew Hemingway, wearing a Join-or-Die T-shirt, speaks into a microphone, his anti-Mitt jeremiad radiating from a small grey amp.
“Did you know that 50,000 people fled Massachusetts because of Mitt Romney, fled to the free state of New Hampshire?” asks Hemingway. “For him to say, in a recent Politico article, that a lot of Tea Party people in New Hampshire like him? I say he’s drinking the wrong Kool Aid.”
Jerry DeLemus, chairman of Granite State Patriots, warns us that Romney is about to commit fraud, getting the media to take pictures of him in front of a “Tea Party” banner and pronounce him acceptable.
“A photo-op is just that,” he says. “I can take a picture of myself in front of the Supreme Court. That does not make me a Supreme Court justice!”

Read the whole thing. Dave does good work.

UPDATE V: The first few photos at the top were uploaded while we were still at Rollins Park, where I was poaching WiFi from the Tea Party Express. Several people — including Weigel and Andrea Shea King — thought it was amusing to see me working on the grass and shot some photos:

Whatever it takes to get the story, right?

Speaking of which, Da Tech Guy’s doing a quick fund-raiser in an attempt to get enough money to join the Tea Party Express tour.

Both Da Tech Guy and I have more photos, videos, etc., to get online, but Sarah Palin’s due in Manchester at noon Tuesday, so we’re going to have to shut down the National Affairs Desk here in Concord and get back on the road.

UPDATE VI: We’re at the hotel in Manchester where the Tea Party Express crew is staying. Pete’s uploading video and telling stories of his travels. Meanwhile, Don Surber writes:

What does compute is that as the lone New Englander in the race, Romney must win New Hampshire. And how does he go about that? By sucking up to the party brass? By showing everyone how centrist and electable he is? By using the 2008 plan?
No, he is asking the Tea Party for help. Far from being the extremists who will turn off middle America, the Tea Party is middle America.

Surber links the Boston Globe‘s story:

CONCORD, N.H. — More than 25 protesters turned out before a Tea Party Express rally this evening to protest not President Obama, but Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
“We do not need leadership that puts their finger up, sees which way the wind’s blowing and then all of a sudden changes their mind and goes back in that direction,” Tim Carter, a leader of the Lakes Region Tea Party in New Hampshire. “If you look at Mitt’s past voting record, I think that’s what you’re going to see.” . . .
The FreedomWorks rally was held before the larger Tea Party Express rally, where Romney was scheduled to speak. FreedomWorks had been active with the Tea Party Express, but pulled its staff member off the Express bus to protest Romney’s inclusion in today’s event. After holding the anti-Romney rally, it urged participants to join the Express event, held in the same place.
The Tea Party Express tour, which is crossing the country in the lead-up to a Tea Party-sponsored Sept. 12 presidential debate, invited all Republican presidential candidates to speak at rallies along the route. With the entrance of Texas Governor Rick Perry into the presidential race, Romney has showed signs that he will be reaching out more to Tea Party activists.

UPDATE VII: Bob Belvedere at The Camp of the Saints quotes the original Gonzo:

It was dangerous lunacy, but it was also the kind of thing a real connoisseur of edge-work could make an argument for… Separately, we might pull it off. But together, no — we would blow it. Too much aggressive chemistry in that mix; the temptation to run a deliberate freakout would be too heavy.

When the going gets weird, the weird go to New Hampshire.

UPDATE VIII: The 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.

The civility of the Tea Party was, or at least should be, the big story of this event, as Da Tech Guy has been saying all night. Here’s Pete’s video where he asks a question of Romney and then of Romney’s finance director Ron Kaufman:

Linked at Memeorandum, with more from The Lonely Conservative and The Gateway Pundit.

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