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Et tu, Mitt?

Posted by Erick Erickson (Profile)

Monday, March 15th at 12:01PM EDT

41 Comments
Bob Bennett, as you know, is the TARP-backing, Bridge-to-Nowhere-supporting, health-care-takeover-proposing RINO running for his life to win re-nomination in Utah for a fourth term. Bob Bennett’s health care proposal – it’s called the Wyden-Bennett bill, remember – includes an individual mandate, forces taxpayers to subsidize abortions, supports “domestic partner” benefits, and would cost more than $1 trillion. He is an unrepentant earmarker, whom Senator Jim DeMint has conspicuously declined to endorse for re-election.

Conservatives in Utah are rallying around Bennett’s challengers, and the Club for Growth is actively working to defeat him at the May nominating convention.

So who does Bennett call on to save his career? Mitt Romney, of course. Bennett is even giving away copies of Romney’s book on the campaign trail — maybe that explains the curious New York Times notation that Romney’s book, debuting in the number one spot this past week on the best sellers list, was the only book on the list to have received bulk orders.

Romney may think he’s playing it safe here. But so did Rick Santorum in 2004, actively supporting Sen. Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey in the Pennsylvania Republican Senate primary. The move alienated Santorum’s base and rendered him a dead-man walking in his own re-election campaign two years later. Romney is now walking the same plank in Utah – supporting an unpopular, out-of-touch establishment incumbent against fresh, new, principled conservatives of the sort who are finally breathing life into the Republican Party. This comes on the heels of Romney declining to join every other 2012 hopeful in NY-23 supporting Doug Hoffman.

Conservatives right now can’t know who their candidate will be in 2012, but this may get them thinking.