Republicans in windy swing states are angry Mitt Romney's back stabbing on wind power tax credits. Wind power has provided thousands of good jobs to rural America and reliable income to farmers. Romney's has abandoned farmers and businesses that are helping to build a strong economic base in rural Iowa and Colorado. He's blowing it with independent voters in these key swing states and Republican pols are angrily calling him on it. Just over a week ago long-time Iowa Republican senator Chuck Grassley went nuclear on Romney's job killing plan to abandon wind power.



"I'm the author of the wind energy tax credit of 1992, and there were people from outside the state came into Iowa and issued a press release that the Republican candidate for president was opposed to wind energy, and I felt it was just like a knife in my back".... "when you think at a time of 8.2 percent unemployment there would be any question that you wouldn't want to lay off 4,000 more people in the state of Iowa and probably 25,000 people nationwide, but that's kind of what's at stake here."

In an interview with ThinkProgress, Tipton rejected Romney’s pledge to end the wind tax credit, saying that the industry needs at least two years before it can be self-sustainable. “Do you want to cut it off when they’re on the cusp of being where we want them to be and to be able to create jobs and to be able to part of the energy solution?” Tipton asked, before answering his own question: “No, I don’t think we do.” TIPTON: This is an industry that has explained to us a viable technology that can be competitive with other fuel sources that are going to be out there. Is it going to be the primary one that could actually fill in to be able to take off some of that load? KEYES: So you’re saying probably maintain it for two years? TIPTON: That’s what we’ve called for. We’re actually going to work with the industry because that’s what they tell us, then they don’t need this. Do you want to cut it off when they’re on the cusp of being where we want them to be and to be able to create jobs and to be able to part of the energy solution? No, I don’t think we do.

David Yepsen, a former Des Moines Register reporter and the current director of the state’s bipartisan Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, thinks that while opposition to the wind subsidy alone might not damage Romney, the issue could feed into a larger narrative about Mitt Romney and rural America. Wind energy, he says, is an issue that can matter to voters “psychologically.” “There are some issues that convey to voters in rural America that you understand their problems,” Yepsen says, mentioning the farm bill and ethanol subsidies as other examples. “What these convey to people is that you sort of get it, that you understand the problems in rural America, the need for economic growth and diversity.”

Even the conservative National Review is publishing articles slamming Romney's abandonment of wind power. Romney is showing he doesn't understand the problems of rural Americans according to an expert they interviewed from Iowa.

That's the kiss of death in Iowa and Colorado.