Romney breaks post-loss silence

Ex-candidate calls election a ‘roller coaster,’ slams Obama on cuts

— Mitt Romney is back, if only briefly.

The former Republican presidential candidate is reemerging after nearly four months in seclusion at his Southern California home.

Former aides describe his burst of activity this month - a national broadcast interview, a speech at a gathering of conservatives - as a thank-you tour of sorts designed to close out a lengthy political career.

In his first public comments in months, Romney used a Fox News interview to criticize President Barack Obama’s leadership. The former Massachusetts governor said Obama has been “flying around the country and berating Republicans and blaming and pointing” instead of preventing Washington’s latest budget crisis.

In about two weeks, Romney is to deliver his first post election speech, at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

A few Republican governors who aggressively supported Romney’s presidential bid last fall offered lukewarm responses in recent days to the question of Romney’s future role in the GOP. Conservative leaders suggest they’re ready for a new era without a prominent Romney role.

“He has every right to be involved. And certainly he gave a lot for the cause,” said Tim Phillips, president of the national conservative group Americans for Prosperity. “But most of the movement is wanting to look forward. They want to look forward to the next generation of leaders.”

Without a public office or a prominent position in the private sector, Romney lacks a ready platform.

Before Romney, the previous two losing nominees, Republican John McCain in 2008 and Democrat John Kerry in 2004, eased their way back into national politics through the Senate seats they retained after the elections.

After his loss in 2000, former Vice President Al Gore appeared in a documentary film about climate change and became an outspoken advocate for environmental protections.

But almost immediately after his defeat, Romney retreated to the privacy of his California home. He surfaced in the national media in recent months only in photographs such as those showing him pumping gas, enjoying a day out with his family at Disneyland and shopping at Costco.

In his goodbye message to staff members at his Boston headquarters in November, Romney promised to remain an active voice in the party. Four months later, former aides say that he’s more likely to play a quieter role focused on fundraising, while busing his status to help elevate issues from time to time.

“We were on a roller coaster, exciting and thrilling, ups and downs. But the ride ends. And then you get off,” Romney told Fox News Sunday in an interview taped Thursday in California.

In the same interview, Romney said Obama and Congress are squandering an “almost once-in-generational opportunity for America to solve its fiscal problems.”

That opportunity, Romney said, was the combination of the expiration of the President George W. Bush-era income-tax cuts at the end of 2012 and the automatic spending cuts that went into effect Friday.

Several Republican governors, already jockeying to fill a leadership vacuum in an evolving GOP, offered reserved responses when asked during last weekend’s meeting of the National Governors Association about Romney’s re-emergence.

“We need as many voices for conservative reform and leadership as possible,” said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, among those Republicans thought to be weighing a 2016 presidential bid.

Information for this article was contributed by Dennis Junius of The Associated Press and by Derek Wallbank of Bloomberg News.

Front Section, Pages 4 on 03/03/2013

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