Mitt Romney tells conservatives he's sorry he's not president

By Samuel P. Jacobs

OXON HILL, Maryland (Reuters) - At a gathering for conservatives to plot their future, there was a stark reminder of the past on Friday as failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney made his first public speech since election night.

"I am sorry that I won't be your president," Romney told the audience of the Conservative Political Action Conference, "but I will be your co-worker and I will stand shoulder to shoulder beside you."

Since he accepted defeat to President Barack Obama in the early hours of the morning on November 7 in Boston, Romney has largely vanished from view. He is occasionally spotted on the ski slopes with his family, pumping gas, or shopping at Costco.

He and his wife Ann have retired to La Jolla, California, where the Romney family keeps a home, although they did give an interview to Fox News last month.

The former Massachusetts governor was the first losing presidential candidate in nearly 25 years not to be in Washington on Inauguration Day.

Looking tanned since his time off the campaign trail, Romney delivered what sounded very like his campaign speech. He told vignettes about the Americans he met as he traveled across the country on the way to his eventual defeat.

Romney said he realized the awkwardness of his position.

"As someone who just lost the last election, I'm probably not the best person to chart the course for the next election," he said.

ROCKY RELATIONSHIP

Romney has never had a simple relationship with the conservative base, which always suspected he was too moderate on healthcare, abortion and other issues.

In past years, Romney won the conference's straw poll for preferred presidential candidate, but audiences like CPAC are often filled with the sort of Republicans who were most suspicious of his conservative credentials.

Appearing at the same event last year, Romney declared himself to be "severely conservative." That strained formulation did not warm conservatives' hearts and led to ridicule from some in the media.

For many gathered at a hotel here south of Washington, the lesson from Romney's loss is a simple one: Republicans nominated a candidate who wasn't conservative enough.

On Thursday, Texas Governor Rick Perry, once Romney's rival in the presidential primary, told the crowd: "The popular media narrative is that this country has shifted away from conservative ideas, as evidence by the last two presidential elections. That's what they think, that's what they say. That might be true if Republicans had actually nominated conservative candidates in 2008 and 2012."

"The fact is the base didn't come out for him," said Bob Vander Plaats, the president of the Family Leader and a prominent social conservative in the early-voting state of Iowa. "No matter how much we did to push our base towards him that was a hard rope to push."

Romney was received warmly by the audience and the former candidate thanked them for their "earnest support."

He did have one warning for conservatives.

"We particularly need to hear from the governors of the blue and purple states," he said, advising conservatives not to give up on the states where he lost to Obama.

Romney mentioned two governors — New Jersey's Chris Christie and Virginia's Bob McDonnell — who were not invited to participate in the influential conference.

Both governors have been criticized for taking positions that part with Republican orthodoxy. But a Reuters/Ipsos online poll on Friday showed Christie as the Republican with the best rating against possible 2016 Democratic opponents Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden. [ID:nL1N0C76P2]

LARGELY IGNORED

Since his defeat, Romney has rarely been mentioned by conservatives.

Speaking a few hours before Romney, Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan, the Republican vice presidential nominee, centered his remarks on the federal budget and made no mention of his former running mate.

In the aftermath of the last campaign, Republicans have set about refashioning their image, moving away from Romney's campaign positions.

Romney's campaign was marked by a hawkish view on immigration and was hindered by his remarks in secretly recorded video deploring nearly half of all Americans as "victims."

Now, Republican congressmen are playing leading roles in trying to reform immigration laws and leaders are encouraging reaching out to African-American and Hispanic voters, two groups that backed Obama by wide margins.

Influential Republicans like Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal have called on their party to embrace the people Romney appeared to reject in his infamous "47 percent" remarks about voters who receive government aid.

Despite his downfall, Romney was undeterred.

"It's fashionable in some circles to be pessimistic about America, about conservative solutions, about the Republican Party," Romney said. "I utterly reject that pessimism."

(Editing by Alistair Bell and Claudia Parsons)

View the original article here

A reflective Romney emerges from seclusion, rips Obama

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Four months after his bitter election defeat, a reflective Mitt Romney said it "kills" him not to be president and admitted mistakes were made in his losing White House campaign - particularly his failure to win over minority voters.

In his first television interview since November's loss to President Barack Obama, Romney leveled a fresh blast of criticism at Obama for failing to lead and putting politics ahead of results in the confrontation with congressional Republicans over the budget and spending cuts.

"It kills me not to be there, not to be in the White House doing what needs to be done," Romney said in an interview on the "Fox News Sunday" program, adding that Obama was still campaigning rather than bringing people together to craft a deal.

"I don't see that kind of leadership happening right now," the 2012 Republican presidential candidate said. "The hardest thing about losing is watching this critical moment, this golden moment slip away with politics."

Romney's interview was the first step in a slow public re-entry for the former Massachusetts governor, who has been largely secluded at his southern California home with his wife Ann since the November loss.

In two weeks, Romney will make his first public speech since the election, to a conference of conservative activists in Washington.

In the Fox interview, taped last week and aired on Sunday, Romney mostly avoided questions about the heavy criticism he has received from his fellow Republicans for running a lackluster and gaffe-prone campaign.

"I don't spend my life looking back," Romney said, adding he would not run again but he would still be active in public life.

He said he should have done a better job in appealing to minority voters including blacks and Hispanics, calling his failure "a real mistake."

Romney, who called for "self-deportation" of illegal immigrants during the Republican primaries, lost the vote of more than seven of every 10 Hispanics to Obama. Most of the illegal immigrants in the United States are Hispanics.

'TWISTED AND DISTORTED'

Romney also said he regretted his wording in secretly recorded remarks at a Florida fund-raiser about the "47 percent" of Americans who were dependent on government and would never vote for him.

"It's not what I meant. I didn't express myself as I wished I would have," Romney said.

"When you speak in private you don't spend as much time thinking about how something could be twisted and distorted, and it could come out wrong and be used," he said. "That hurt. There's no question that hurt and did real damage to my campaign."

Romney said he still planned to speak out on issues and to help Republicans going forward, although he said that "I recognize that as the guy who lost the election, I'm not in a position to tell everybody else how to win."

Romney said he was convinced he was headed to victory in November until early on election night, when he saw the first exit polls showing a tight race in Florida, where he expected to do well. By the time the "disappointing" results from Ohio began to come in he knew it was over, he said.

"It's hard. It's emotional. I mean, there was such passion in the people who were helping us. I just felt, you know, we have really let them down," he said.

Romney refused to criticize Republican Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey for praising Obama and joining the president on a tour of storm damage in the state one week before the election. Some Republicans have criticized Christie for giving a boost to Obama in the campaign's final days.

"Chris was doing what he thought was best for the people of his state," Romney said. "I lost my election because of my campaign, not because of what anybody else did."

Romney said he and his wife, who also participated in the interview, were spending more time with their grandchildren and slowly adjusting to life after a presidential campaign.

"We were on a roller coaster, exciting and thrilling, ups and downs," he said. "But the ride ends, and then you get off."

Ann Romney said she blamed the media for unfairly treating her husband. The portrayals of them as rich and out-of-touch kept the public from getting "to know Mitt for who he was."

While she shed tears after the loss, she said, "I'm mostly over it. But not completely."

(Editing by Will Dunham)

View the original article here