Romney’s Pa. bus tour: Tale of two Wawas

By Thomas Fitzgerald, INQUIRER POLITCS WRITER
Posted: June 17, 2012

Mitt Romney's small-town bus tour of swing states rolled across eastern Pennsylvania Saturday, allowing the Republican presidential candidate to campaign as a champion of the middle class in picturesque everyday American settings and to munch on a meatball hoagie at a Wawa in Bucks County.

Yet a group of some 250 Democratic protesters led by former Gov. Ed Rendell and waiting to pounce at a scheduled Wawa stop outside Quakertown caused the Romney motorcade to divert to another Wawa several miles away on Route 309.

The abrupt last-minute schedule change gave a taste of the fight ahead in what is likely to be a close presidential campaign, in a political climate where every move by one side is increasingly contested by the other.

"I understand I had a surrogate over there already, so we decided to pick a different place," Romney joked, referring to Rendell, who backs President Obama but who has criticized the incumbent and has said Romney has a chance to win the state.

Contact Thomas Fitzgerald at 215-854-2718 or tfitzgerald@phillynews.com or on Twitter @tomfitzgerald. Read his blog, "The Big Tent," at www.philly.com/bigtent.

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