Tea Party activists: Romney best hope to end "Obamacare"

(CBS News) Columbus, OH -- Some Tea Party activists at a state convention here are less than enthused about their presumptive presidential nominee, but are looking to him as their best hope to get rid of the Affordable Care Act.

"I believe that I am being forced to vote for the lesser of the two evils, which would be Mitt Romney," Kelly Sanders, a registered nurse from Fairfield County, said at a "We the People" Tea Party Convention here over the weekend. "I am not excited about Mitt, but I do like some of the things he has proposed."

"He was not my original choice," said retiree Edward Vincent of Suffield Township. "He was a career politician and some of his stuff that he did in the past was not conservative enough."

At the top of that list is the Massachusetts health law that Romney signed in 2006 when he was governor. President Obama and others have called it the model for the new federal health law which, to the dismay of conservatives, the Supreme Court upheld last week as constitutional.

"I don't like the fact that it was sold to the American people and sold to many members of Congress based on deception," said Jessica Koebel of Fairfield County, who was among some 1,000 activists at the two-day convention. "We now find out that it is a tax after it was sold to us as being a penalty and not a tax."

Sanders said health care needs to be fixed but "I do not believe the current proposal helps the cost problem in any way shape or form."

Republican John McAvoy of Millbury said that the onus is on voters to elect Romney in November. "We got to either have Romney who says 'I will repeal it' or we are going to have President Obama who says he is going to support it. Which one do you want?" he said.

Romney repeatedly has vowed to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act, saying states should be free to do what's best for them. In an interview with Newsmax shortly after the Supreme Court announced its ruling, Romney said the decision was "a plus for me" politically.

"Obamacare is not good law; it's not good policy. The American people didn't want it in 2010," Romney said. "That's one of the reasons we picked up so many seats in the House and Senate, and I think in the election this November people who know they don't want Obamacare will have to vote out President Obama, and that's a plus for me."