Matt Kibbe, president of huge tea party group Freedom Works and owner of the most fantastic sideburns since Hugh Jackman's in Wolverine, tells The Daily Caller it won't be backing Mitt Romney or anyone else.
Will tea partiers and FreedomWorks campaign for Romney? Will you support Orrin Hatch if he wins the GOP primary in Utah?
FreedomWorks has not made it a practice to endorse for presidential elections, and I don’t expect we’ll deviate from tradition this year. Our focus elsewhere is always on electing more-conservative candidates.
If Sen. Hatch is able to pull out a victory over his strong conservative challenger, Dan Liljenquist, it will be because Hatch was forced to return to the principles of fiscal responsibility and small government that have been the focal point of the race. If Hatch is sent back to the Senate, he’ll go back with a very real understanding of how serious Utahns are about their expectations for his performance and the true conservative principles he should represent.
Kibbe and his group were outright hostile to Romney during the primary (At one point, he said that the only thing going for Romney was delegate math, which sort of means that the only thing going for Romney was that he was winning the nomination), but he's always warned against the fractious possibility of a 3rd party in a general election.
