Romney stumping for McCain, not looking ahead

By Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff

MARION, Iowa -- Wherever he goes in the campaign's final days, Mitt Romney dismisses the pleas of supporters like 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 today as he 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 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, he 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, 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 cliche that timing is everything. He marvels at how the big campaign issues have changed over the last two years: immigration, Iraq, 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 he hopes Romney will run again. "His economic toolbox is stronger than anyone's I can imagine."

But even if McCain loses Tuesday, the possibility of Romney running again has become more complicated now that Palin has emerged as a rival. Though 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., 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 on stage 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 while she'd 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 he is a huge fan of Romney's and voted for him in the caucus, but he's 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 reforming Medicare.

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

He says he won't decide until after the election, but next week, he is going on a Caribbean cruise, sponsored by National Review magazine, where conservative thinkers will gather to talk about the party's future.