November 3, 2008

By Lisa Wangsness, Boston.com

MARION, Iowa - Wherever he goes in the campaign's final days, Mitt Romney dismisses the pleas of supporters such as Carmen Halverson, a white-haired Republican activist with a big Romney button pinned to her red corduroy blazer.

"We want you to run again," she said yesterday as Romney pulled her in for a hug at the local McCain headquarters in this town near Cedar Rapids.

"Oh, no," Romney said with a practiced smile, patting her on the arm. "We're going to get John McCain elected, and then we're going to get him reelected. That's what we're going to do."

Romney has spent the last three days racing across the country, dispatched on a private Learjet by the McCain campaign to rally Republican ground troops and speak with local reporters in nine swing states, from Nevada to New Hampshire. It is an extension of the work the former Massachusetts governor has been doing since he lost the nomination to the Arizona senator in February - headlining fund-raisers for McCain, Republican groups, and more than three dozen congressional and senatorial candidates; donating more than $400,000 through his political action committee to McCain and other candidates; and serving as one of McCain's most active surrogates.

At each stop over the weekend, Romney warned that Barack Obama and congressional Democrats would further damage the country's economy with higher taxes, while McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, would strengthen it by hewing to Republican principles of lower taxes, lower spending, and a strong military.

"Barack Obama said he was only going to raise taxes on people earning over $250,000, then he slipped up and said $200,000, and then Joe Biden slipped up and said $150,000, and then I understand Governor Richardson slipped up and said yesterday $120,000," he told a boisterous crowd of about 300 outside Denver on Saturday night. "Do I hear $80,000? Do I hear $70,000?"

Many of his supporters were eager to hear about his future political plans, but Romney would not engage in the speculation.

"I'm not thinking about that," he said when asked about the possibility he might try again in four years if McCain loses tomorrow. "I'm thinking about what's going to happen to the country."

This is partly good manners and partly, it seems, a genuine respect for the truth in the old cliché that timing is everything. He marvels at how the big campaign issues have changed over the last two years: immigration, Iraq, gas prices, and now the economy.

….

Some supporters beg Romney to serve in a McCain cabinet, perhaps as treasury secretary. But Romney puts them off, too; his father served unhappily as head of Housing and Urban Development in the Nixon administration, and he has no desire to follow in his footsteps.

Instead, Romney says, he hopes to find a way to work from the outside, perhaps by working with think tanks, going on the lecture circuit, and writing opinion articles on the issues he cares about, such as overhauling Medicare.

"I'd love to get my hands into it, I really would," he said in an interview.

He says he will not decide on his future until after the election, but next week he will be a featured speaker on a Caribbean cruise, sponsored by National Review magazine, where conservative thinkers will gather to talk about the party's future….

Read entire story.