Conservative Group Launches "Dump Romney" Campaign

"Disgusting and highly inappropriate," says Ron Paul's campaign manager. Also a bit late in the game.

A group called "Jews and Christians Together," which backed Rick Santorum in the Republican primary, is sending a memo to Republican National Convention delegates urging them not to vote for Mitt Romney at the convention, even if they're bound to him.

The nine-page memo casts Romney's nomination in the direst terms. A press release from the group reads:

"DUMP ROMNEY" contends that no delegates are actually "bound" by law or GOP
rules to vote for Romney and that, to win the White House and toss-up
Senate seats, delegates must exercise their right to "conscientiously
abstain" from Romney on the crucial first ballot, aiming for a
stronger ticket leader in subsequent convention voting rounds.

The core of a hard-hitting new 80,000 word book and incubating Tampa
insurgency, the entire memo can be read online free via Amazon Kindle
Cloud Reader using the Amazon.com search term "DUMP ROMNEY." "Were
frontrunners simply entitled to the nomination, a convention wouldn't
be necessary," the texts say, noting that Intrade predictive markets
gives Obama odds of about 60-40 over Romney and that New York Times
political analyst Nate Silver projects about 300 electoral votes for
Obama, rating Romney's current odds around 21%.

The memo doesn't specify who Romney should be replaced with.

A core of Ron Paul supporters had been the only organized Republican opposition to accepting Romney as the nominee, but Paul campaign manager Jesse Benton told BuzzFeed that the memo had nothing to do with them, calling it "disgusting and highly inappropriate."

Instead, it's a brainchild of Steve Baldwin, the former chief of the Council for National Policy, a low-profile, well-connected conservative group. Baldwin said the memo was sent out to 20,000 people in politics in media, as well as RNC delegates.

"We’re just saying that Romney has so many liabilities that will be exploited by Obama," Baldwin said in a phone interview. "I don’t have a problems with Mormons personally, but it is a liability issue" among evangelical voters, Baldwin said.

Baldwin said that the people who put together the memo are supporters of different primary candidates, including Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich (Baldwin is a Bachmann supporter).

Jews and Christians Together briefly made the news in March for putting out robocalls in Ohio on behalf of Rick Santorum, then still a presidential candidate. The call accused Romney of supporting "open homosexuality in the military, the appointment of homosexual judges, and the ENDA law, making it illegal to fire a man who wears a dress and high heels to work, even if he's your kid's teacher."

The memo is accompanied by an "expanded" 100-page version, available on Amazon. It devotes a lot of space to attacking Romney's Mormonism as "hostile to American monotheism and hetero-monogamy" (there's even a picture of Brigham Young in drag).

Skip to footer