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Romney's work puts him in 2012 political spotlight
2009-03-30
BOSTON - Mitt Romney doesn't have a job for the first time in his adult life. That hardly means he's not working. In ways both subtle and overt, the 2008 Republican presidential contender, former Massachusetts governor, one-time Olympics chief and high-flying businessman is building toward a 2012 White House campaign by judiciously engaging and disengaging with the national debate. On Tuesday, he's in Chicago to speak at a fundraiser for a prospective state treasurer candidate. On Wednesday, he's in Washington to headline a fundraiser for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. On Thursday, he's again the keynote speaker at a fundraising dinner for Republicans in New York City. After that, he's heading back to his oceanfront home in La Jolla, Calif., to continue writing newspaper columns and a political book. Based on the '60s tome "The American Challenge" by Frenchman Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, it will be aimed at shaking American economic and political complacency, he said. Romney's also supervising the sale of houses he owns in Massachusetts and Utah, the type of excess real estate that brought ridicule to John McCain last fall. And his political action committee is seeding money to candidates across the country. "This is a quiet time," Romney insisted Friday during a telephone interview with The Associated Press from Park City, Utah. He had just completed loading a U-Haul trailer with personal effects from the ski home he's selling and was about to set out -- alone -- for the 11 1/2-hour drive back to California. "At this stage, running again is way beyond the horizon," said Romney, 62. "This year is working on a book. The next year will be helping in Republican campaigns. And I don't know what the year after that will bring." Republican strategist Mary Matalin says she can easily see a second campaign -- and a more successful one, at that. "There's nothing like going around the track once to broaden the field," Matalin said. "He has an intellectual base. He has a politics-faith base. He certainly has an economic base. If there's anything illogical about it, it's that he -- and not some of the other people who may appeal more strongly to one of those elements -- has the greatest potential to pull all those factions together." A year ago, Romney was little more than one of the 10 vanquished contenders on the road to the Republican presidential nomination. McCain won after an especially nasty Florida battle with Romney. Yet rather than wallowing in defeat, Romney re-engaged. He dispatched his top fundraisers to McCain's cause, and he urged former business colleague Meg Whitman, once the chief executive of eBay, to sign on as a senior McCain adviser. Romney also emerged as one the campaign's top surrogates, was a finalist to be McCain's running mate and, since McCain's loss to Barack Obama, has worked with the Arizona senator to prepare an alternative economic stimulus package. "It showed Mitt Romney to be a team player who was committed to the cause, and in doing so, he endeared himself to parts of the party that he may not have previously endeared himself to," said Phil Musser, a strategist who worked for Romney at the Republican Governors Association. Today, the dearth of a clear leader among Republicans, as well as Romney's work as a turnaround artist, have put him in the top tier of potential 2012 GOP candidates. Others include Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, whom McCain eventually chose as his running mate, and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a fresh face like Obama has been for Democrats. There was none of the social conservative concern about a Mormon like Romney when he got a hero's welcome before a January speech to a House Republican retreat. And there was a similar cacophony of applause -- and a straw poll victory -- when Romney addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington last month. He had used the same venue a year earlier to deliver his campaign concession speech. "America voted for change," Romney said this year at the CPAC. "America did not vote for a boatload of new government spending programs that would guarantee higher taxes and high deficits as far as the eye can see, and that would threaten our currency, our economy and our future." While conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh has been criticized for saying flatly he hopes Obama fails as president, Romney has added a courteous caveat to his well wishes. "Like everyone who loves this country, I want him to adopt correct principles and then to succeed," he told the House Republicans in January. Romney also has been careful in dealing with potential 2012 rivals and adversaries. He told Time magazine that Palin is "an effective and popular political voice" who will "have an impact on the party's direction in the future." And he's sponsoring a Boston fundraiser on April 16 for Jindal. Courtesy does have its limits, though; none of the money Jindal raises could be used in a federal race, since it is for his state re-election account.
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