Monday, March 30, 2009

Rightfully in the Spotlight...

photo source: Right winger's photo stream/Flicker

>> read the full AP article here
'Mitt Romney's work puts him in 2012 political spotlight'


...[Mitt Romney'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.

"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."

A year ago, Romney was little more than one of the 10 vanquished contenders on the road to the Republican presidential nomination.

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.

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.

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