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While taking pains to emphasize that he is not prepared to endorse a presidential candidate, a leader of one of the nation's largest and most prominent Tea Party groups on Wednesday harshly criticized former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and went out of his way to lavish praise upon Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who is expected to enter the race next month.

Mark Meckler, a co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, singled out Romney's Massachusetts health care plan as a primary reason why the national front-runner for the Republican nomination "clearly has difficulties" with members of the movement.

"He's attached to RomneyCare and has done a poor job of distancing himself from that," Meckler told reporters at a breakfast in Washington, D.C., hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. "I think he probably squandered an incredible opportunity and was probably the best guy to say, ‘I tried this and it failed,' and he has not done a good job of that. So he has taken positions that are contrary to what the average Tea Partier would take -- positions on man-made global warming, positions on energy efficiency. So I think he's in real trouble with the Tea Party base."

Asked about Perry, Meckler struck an altogether different tone and said that the three-term governor "changes the equation" of the GOP field.

"You hear all across the country nowadays that Texas created about half the jobs in the U.S. in the last couple of years, and so I think you've got the Texas miracle going on while a lot of the rest of the country seems to be sinking," he said. "And in a time of economic strife, I think that's potentially a game-changer for him to enter the fray."

Despite his lavish praise for Perry and condemnation of Romney, Meckler said that rank-and-file Tea Party voters were still in the process of mulling the field. He said that while there did not seem to be any candidate that the Tea Party base was particularly excited about at this point, he considered that "a great thing."

"We saw what enthusiasm gives us," Meckler said. "It gives us what we have in the White House right now. Barack Obama was elected on a base of enthusiasm and excitement."

Jenny Beth Martin, Tea Party Patriots' other co-founder, echoed Meckler's assessment that members of their group were not on the verge of coalescing around a candidate. But she had kind words for Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, who has generated early momentum among grass-roots conservatives.

"Our people appreciate the way that Michele Bachmann has taken a stand for our values in Congress and the way that she's voted, for the most part, in the past couple of years," Martin said.