Romney racing across the country for McCain

Mitt Romney rallied campaign workers at a McCain-Palin regional office over the weekend in Henderson, Nev. (Ethan Miller/ Getty Images)

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 of his supporters sigh at what might have been if the economic crisis had happened a year ago, or if Romney had been McCain's vice presidential choice.

"I've had a lot of people tell me they wish they had another name on the ticket," Tim Palmer, 47, a supporter from Cedar Rapids, told Romney as he drove his small entourage to lunch at a barbecue joint.

Palmer said later that he hopes Romney will run again.

"His economic toolbox is stronger than anyone's I can imagine."

But even if McCain loses tomorrow, the possibility of Romney running again has become more complicated now that Palin has emerged as a rival. Although polls show she is a drag on the Republican ticket, the Alaska governor has energized the Republican base, and even some of his strongest supporters say they have been charmed.

At Mr. Biggs Family Fun Center in deeply conservative Colorado Springs, Colo., a state where Romney beat McCain by 40 percentage points in the Republican caucus, hundreds of people turned out to hear him campaign for McCain in the middle of a beautiful Saturday afternoon. People cheered wildly when he walked out onstage and seemed to hang on his every word.

But the room was awash in Palin signs and stickers. Debbi Maser, who was selling political buttons in the back of the room, said that while she had sold only two Romney buttons, seven varieties of Palin buttons were going fast.

"Everybody loves Palin," she said with a smile.

Her husband, Jim Maser, said that he is a huge fan of Romney's and voted for him in the caucus, but that he is now gunning for a Palin run in 2012 if the ticket doesn't win tomorrow.

"Sarah Palin - she's one of us," he said. "Not that Mitt isn't, but to me, Palin has intangible characteristics that [Ronald] Reagan had."

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.

Romney coughed as he settled Saturday night into the Learjet. He was suffering from a cold, and his voice was hoarse from talking. He called his wife, Ann, to check on their new grandchild, Anna Soleil, born on Thursday.

He said that if McCain and Palin win and are reelected in 2012, Palin would be the likely nominee eight years down the road.

"Time will tell," Romney said.

Lisa Wangsness can be reached at lwangsness@globe.com.