Palin: Romney Has 'Challenge' Winning Over Tea Party

Politico reports:

Standing at Bunker Hill, Sarah Palin fired a warning shot at Mitt Romney.

Appealing to tea party will be “a big challenge for him, ” Palin said Thursday.

“Tea party activists are pretty strident in a good way,” Palin said, explaining that they will want “to make sure that we’re not going to have any excuses or perceived political reasons to grow government, because we can’t afford it.”

Palin confirmed that she was referring to Romney’s support of state-supported health care while governor of Massachusetts. Though Palin acknowledged that there was a difference between the federal mandates and the state mandates Romney signed into law, she said the distinction was not enough to satisfy her.

“He makes a good argument there that states’ rights and authority and responsibility allowed in our states makes more sense than big centralized government telling us what to do,” Palin said. “However, even on a state level and a local level, mandates coming from a governing body — it’s tough for a lot of us independent Americans to accept because we have great faith in the private sector and our own families, and our own businessmen and — women making decision for ourselves, not any level of government telling us what to do.”

At her stops at Boston’s historic sights so far on Thursday, Palin has shrugged off the idea of a rivalry with Romney, calling it “coincidental” that her trip to New Hampshire later in the day will come on the same day when the former Massachusetts governor launches his campaign.

“I promise you that it never was a consideration at all. In fact, if he personally would be offended by our stepping foot in a state that he is in, I wouldn’t do it. But I don’t believe that Governor Romney is offended at all,” Palin told reporters before leaving Bunker Hill.