Mitt Romney at CPAC

Romney's gearing up for 2012 with lessons from '08 on his mind

By Dan Balz
Sunday, February 21, 2010; A02


For most of the past year, Mitt Romney has been off the stage. While Sarah Palin has commanded headlines, while other Republicans have jumped into intraparty controversies over purity and as GOP leaders have vied with one another to bash President Obama the loudest, Romney stayed largely out of the fray.
That is about to change. The former Massachusetts governor has spent much of the past year working on a book called "No Apology" that will be published next month. He is now preparing to reemerge, with an eye on a possible 2012 presidential campaign. The question is what he learned from his failed 2008 campaign.
He marked the beginning of his reemergence with an appearance at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, which wrapped up three days of rhetoric Saturday. There he delivered a full-throated attack on Obama's policies, and he offered praise for former president George W. Bush and former vice president Dick Cheney.
For that he drew an enthusiastic response from an audience that has become emblematic of the party's most conservative wing. It didn't hurt that he was introduced by the newest darling of Republicans, Sen. Scott Brown (Mass.), whose victory in the special election for the seat once held by the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D) dramatically changed the political calculus in Washington and around the country.
Brown's election provided Romney with one of his best laugh lines. "For that victory," he said, "that stopped Obama-care and turned back the Reid-Pelosi liberal tide, we have something to say that you'd never think you'd hear at CPAC, 'Thank you, Massachusetts!' "
Romney wore his Massachusetts experience uncomfortably in the last presidential campaign. To compete for the nomination, he was forced to change some of the positions he had taken in two statewide campaigns in the Bay State-- one unsuccessful, one successful. He moved sharply to the right on abortion and gay rights and ran away from the health-care overhaul that he signed as governor and that bears resemblance to many of the ideas Democrats have pushed over the past year.
To win over social conservatives, he overcompensated. His 2007 speech at CPAC was replete with references to their issues. "I have stood in the center of the battlefield on every major social issue," he said that year. On Thursday, his speech contained no references to abortion, same-sex marriage or some of the other issues that became touchstones in his effort to win the hearts and minds of skeptical conservatives.
Romney has not abandoned any of those 2008 positions, and one speech is hardly representative of the body of his thinking or the themes he will strike to win support of conservatives, if he chooses to run again in 2012. But as a small indicator, the speech Thursday at least hinted that Romney and his advisers concluded that he had emphasized those issues far too much, for too little gain.
In his first campaign, Romney struggled to present himself in an authentic way. Many conservatives doubted his conversion. Moderates were disappointed that he seemed to have put on a new suit of clothes. His rivals ridiculed him as a flip-flopper. The media made Romney's shifting positions central to their coverage of his candidacy.
Most damaging was that Romney robbed himself of what many advisers and admirers had long thought was his most attractive attribute: that the former business executive knew how to fix problems, particularly with the economy. If he runs in 2012, it likely will be as a conservative Mr. Fix-It, rather than a convert to the cultural wars.
As much as Romney labored with his presentation, his campaign became an often undisciplined battleground of its own. Romney hired many top party consultants but was unable to find a way to get the most out of them. His campaign team was at times paralyzed -- and demoralized -- by the fact that no one could resolve or end constant warring among his media consultants.
Romney has taken steps to fix that problem. Last week he named Matt Rhoades as the new executive director of his political action committee. Rhoades ran Romney's communications operation in 2008 and before that was research director and deputy communications director at the Republican National Committee.
His appointment was seen by Romney loyalists as a sign that the former governor wants a well-executed plan for using his time and money in behalf of Republican candidates this fall, with a particular eye on preparing for another presidential campaign. Rhoades, by his own words, will not tolerate chaos in the Romney organization.
Better than most around Romney, Rhoades understands and can manage the two wings of Romney's political operation -- his Boston-based team of longtime advisers and the high-powered Washington consultants who came aboard for the 2008 campaign. "Rhoades commands the respect of everyone who is counted as part of the Romney team, and that matters a lot to the governor," said Kevin Madden, who was Romney's 2008 campaign press secretary.
Another Romney adviser from 2008 said of Rhoades's arrival, "I think it means the ramp-up will be quick and that 2010 will be a professional effort from day one -- a long way from the Commonwealth PAC," Romney's former political action committee.
It was clear from his CPAC performance that in terms of polish, he will start the 2012 cycle in better shape than the last campaign and ahead of many first-timers in the contest for the Republican nomination. Whether he has found his true voice will be answered in the months ahead.

Mitt Romney: President Obama has 'failed' the American people

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney addressed a gathering of conservatives in Washington today. Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney derided President Barack Obama for having "failed" to deliver on the promises of his administration and sought to paint Republican obstruction as a beneficial thing for the country in a speech today at a gathering of conservatives in Washington.
"President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and their team have failed the American people, and that is why their majority will soon be out the door," Romney told the audience at the CPAC conference, an annual get-together of conservative activists and leaders.
In the speech, an early copy of which the Fix obtained, Romney used the word "fail" no fewer than a dozen times to describe the shortcomings of the current president and the opportunity before Republicans. "The people of America are looking to conservatives for leadership, and we must not fail them," Romney said.
The main thrust of Romney's "failure" argument focused on the idea President had taken his eye off the ball in the early days of 2009, choosing priorities out of step with the American public.
"[Obama's] energy should have been focused on fixing the economy and creating jobs and to succeeding in our fight against radical violent jihad," said Romney. "Instead, he applied his time and political capital to his ill-conceived heath care takeover and to building his personal popularity in foreign countries. He failed to focus, and so he failed."
Romney's indictment of the Obama Administration is rightly regarded as one of the first salvos of the 2012 presidential race. The former Massachusetts Governor has made little secret of his plans to run for the Republican nomination in two years time -- following his unsuccessful primary bid in 2008 -- and has been laying the financial and organizational groundwork for such a bid for quite some time.
And, Romney sounded every bit the leader of his party in the speech, defending the policies of former President George W. Bush -- "I am convinced that history will judge President Bush far more kindly," he said -- and pushing back on the idea that Republicans are the "party of no", more willing to obstruct than do work for the American people. (The speech also had the well-choreographed feel of Romney's events during the 2008 campaign -- right down to his surprise introduction by new Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown.)
"It is right and praiseworthy to say no to bad things," Romney argued, noting that Republican opposition to cap and trade, the Employee Free Choice Act and "government health care" were in line with the opposition of the American people to such proposals. "You see, we conservatives don't have a corner on saying 'no'", Romney said. "We're just the ones who say it when it is the right thing to do."
Romney also outlined -- albeit briefly -- his own governing vision based on three thematic pillars: strengthening the economy, strengthening security and strengthening the family. (Close observers of Romney's rhetoric that these three pillars once made up his three-legged stool during the 2008 campaign.)
On the economy specifically, Romney proposed cutting taxes, making the dollar stronger and "opening markets to America goods" and, broadly, encouraging invention and innovation in the private sector.
"We will insist on greatness from every one of our citizens and rather than apologizing for who we are or for what we have accomplished, we will celebrate our nation's strength and goodness," Romney said at the speech's close.