A new website -- NotMittRomney.com -- is tapping a vein of Republican discontent with the party's putative front-runner. From snarky videos to searing op-ed articles, the site, launched on Sunday, purveys all things anti-Romney.
"We got tens of thousands of hits [Monday] and it's generating some of the most irrational hate mail I've ever seen," said Ali A. Akbar, who co-founded the site with right-wing blogger John Hawkins.
Akbar (yes, that's his real name) describes himself as a GOP communications consultant and activist. Well-traveled, he splits his time between Texas and Georgia, and formerly worked for Scott Brown's Senate campaign in Massachusetts.
Early "co-signers" on the NotMittRomney site include Miami-based Republican strategist Roger Stone and anti-Islam activist Pamela Geller.
Stone's disagreements with Romney range from philosophical to religious, but the bottom line for Stone, Akbar & Co. is that Romney simply cannot beat Barack Obama in 2012.
"Winning is not about being most moderate and thus more broadly acceptable. Winning is about maximizing your base, the intensity of your support and reassembling the Reagan coalition," Stone told Sunshine State News.
"The chance of Romney uniting the party is zero -- a large group bolts if he is nominated."
Mapping a strategy to block Romney's path to the Tampa convention, NotMittRomney will focus first on the Iowa caucuses and then on Florida's Jan. 31 primary.
"Iowa and Florida are our top two priorities," said Akbar, who concedes that Romney will win New Hampshire, but predicts a second- or third-place finish for him in South Carolina.
"Florida plays a crucial role in the timing. It can only be one [rival] after Florida," he said.
Akbar, who supported John McCain in 2008, noted that McCain maneuvered to keep Mike Huckabee in the primaries to block Romney. Suspecting that Romney could employ a similar triangulation strategy in 2012, Akbar said Romney's opponents must coalesce around one rival coming out of Florida and heading into Super Tuesday.
The NotMittRomney campaign has attracted supporters of virtually every other presidential hopeful. Akbar himself says he is "friends with Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich" and "Rick Perry is my governor."
"There are a lot of people straddling. It's a broad coalition, and no one wants to tell people who to vote for," Akbar said. At least not yet.
Romney leads most national polls, but he has yet to top 30 percent -- even as Cain's campaign reels under intense media scrutiny over a string of sexual-harassment allegations.
"National polls don't matter. It's about pledged delegates," Akbar said. "Romney will win some caucuses, but we'll destroy him elsewhere."
Without naming names, Akbar said his effort has received a "private thumbs up from some RNC staffers and county chairmen around the country."
Even as Romney picks up more support among party leaders in Florida, conservatives increasingly fear a third-party eruption if the former Massachusetts governor wins the nomination.
Tea party activists, whose distrust of Romney has tamped down his poll numbers, could bolt for an independent or just sit out the 2012 election.
Stone calls a third-party run "an absolute certainty" if Romney is nominated, and takes a pre-emptive shot at Florida Republican leaders who have jumped on Romney's bandwagon.
"These are the folks who backed Bill McCollum and Charlie Crist and gave us Jim Greer," Stone said.
Battered from the right, Romney is also taking his lumps from the left and the mainstream media. NBC's Chuck Todd on Tuesday called the flip-flopping Romney "the weakest inevitable nominee in the history of American politics."
While it's been a year since Romney appeared on any Sunday talk show and a month since he's held a news conference, NotMittRomney.com asks:
"How do you support a candidate when you literally dont know what he really thinks about anything? How do you trust a candidate like Mitt Romney when its impossible to know where hell really come down on any issue once hes president?"
Branding Romney a "chameleon," Stone runs down a litany of policy shifts:
"As governor of Massachusetts, he supported higher taxes on business, appointed overwhelming liberal Democrat judges and backed gun control.
"As a U.S. Senate candidate, he backed abortion on demand and gay marriage, and attacked Ronald Reagan, who he now says is one of his heroes.
"He criticizes Rick Perry for supporting Al Gore in 1988, but he supported Sen. Paul Tsongas -- clearly to Gore's left -- for president in 1992."
Stone says Romney's motto could be: "Don't like my principles? Wait, I have others!"
Michele Bachmann's spokewoman Alice Stewart calls NotMittRomney "a very good site," but said the Minnesota congresswoman's campaign is not affiliated with it.
That said, Stewart sharply contrasted Bachmann's positions with Romney's.
"We don't need to settle for someone who is anything less than the consistent constitutional conservative that Michele is. She has never wavered on key issues such as life, marriage, individual mandates and opposition to federal stimulus," Stewart said.
As Romney strives to be all things to all people, NotMittRomney is building an expanding tent of its own.
Mutual friends of the Muslim-bashing Geller and Akbar, a Southern Baptist with the most Arabic of names, marvel: "It took Mitt Romney to bring the two of you together."
The Romney campaign was not available for comment.
Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or (772) 801-5341.
