Mitt Romney tea party favorite?

Check out this new poll from The Pew Research Center. The quick headline would be that President Barack Obama’s prospects for re-election look good with a little more than a year and a half to go. But if you look a little deeper, you’ll find an interesting take on the Republican field by self-professed tea party adherents.

Tea party people support Mitt Romney more than any other Republican candidate. They gave him 24 percent, which beat out Mike Huckabee’s 19 percent. Sara Palin came in fifth with 12 percent, just behind Ron Paul and just ahead of the abyss in which several candidates polled 4 percent or less.
One would think Romney’s support of a health care law in Massachusetts that is similar to Obama-Care would pose some problems with the tea party. But then, the party is not an organized entity, so its self-professed membership is impossible to assign to a rigid platform.
Evangelicals and people who attend church at least weekly prefer Huckabee, and the two are virtually tied among all respondents who said they lean Republican.
Much can change between now and November 2012. The poll also found that the Republican race is drawing far less attention than it did at this time in 2007. But Romney appears to be doing better among conservatives than some people, myself included, previously believed.