Mitt Romney to join President Obama for White House lunch on Thursday

							Mitt Romney to join President Obama for White
House lunch on Thursday
By Matt Viser, Globe Staff
11/28/2012 4:07 PM
http://www.boston.com

At some point late on
Thursday morning, Mitt
Romney will be driven to
the steps of the White
House. He will get out of
the car, be escorted to a
room adjacent to the Oval
Office, and sit down for
lunch.
But rather than arriving as
an occupant, the one-time
presidential hopeful will be
a guest in someone else’s
house.
In a meeting that has been
weeks in the making,
Romney will join
President Obama for
private lunch at the White
House just 23 days after he lost the election. It will be the first time they have met since the
election, and it follows several weeks in which Romney has started to contemplate life outside of
politics.
It marks both an early olive branch extended to a vanquished political rival and also is a potentially
pivotal moment for Romney. In the weeks after he lost the election, he has been cast aside for saying
that Obama won because of the “gifts” he bestowed upon Hispanics, African Americans, and young
voters.
Before his lunch at the White House, Romney is planning to meet with his former running mate,
Representative Paul Ryan, in the first time they’ve seen each other face-to-face since the election.
Those close to Romney say he hasn’t decided yet what he wants to do next. He is planning to move
into an office within Solamere Capital, a venture capital firm on Newbury Street that was co-founded
by Romney’s oldest son, Tagg, and his finance chairman, Spencer Zwick.
Former Romney advisers say that he is subleasing office space, but he has no plans to actually have a
role within the firm. Still, the move does indicate that Romney is beginning to lay the groundwork for a
Boston-based life after the presidential campaign.
“He’s a very competitive guy and he always analyzes; he’ll analyze this,” said one longtime Romney
adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly. “But I don’t think he feels blue or
angry or anything like that.”
Meanwhile, the second-guessing of Romney and his
campaign staff continues. Defending Romney, senior
strategist Stuart Stevens wrote an oped published
Wednesday in the Washington Post.
Obama “was a charismatic African American president with
a billion dollars, no primary and a media that often felt
morally conflicted about being critical,” Stevens wrote.
“How easy is that to replicate?”
The meeting at the White House has been several weeks in
the making, and was first brought up on election night, when
Obama said he wanted to get together with his Republican
rival. In a press conference a week later, he said that there
are certain aspects of Romney’s record and his ideas that
could be “very helpful.”
“To give you one example, I do think he did a terrific job running the Olympics,” Obama said. “And
you know, that skill set of trying to figure out how do we make something work better applies to the
federal government.”
Obama said that he wanted to hear some of Romney’s ideas about making the federal government more
customer-friendly, and how to eliminate additional waste. He said that he didn’t have “some specific
assignment” for Romney but wanted to “see if there are some ways that we can potentially work
together.”
“He presented some ideas during the course of the campaign that I actually agree with,” Obama said.
                                         “And so it’d be interesting to talk to him about something
                                         like that. There may be ideas that he has with respect to jobs
                                         and growth that can help middle-class families that I want to
                                         hear.”
                                           Just before Thanksgiving, the White House called Matt
                                           Rhoades, who was Romney’s campaign manager, to see if
                                           Romney would be interested in having lunch at the White
                                           House. Rhoades replied that he would, and the lunch started
                                           to be pieced together.
                                           “It was a gracious invitation from the president, which Mitt
                                           Romney was glad to accept,” Eric Fehrnstrom, a longtime
                                           Romney aide, said on Wednesday.

                                           White House press secretary Jay Carney said on Wednesday
                                           that Obama had no particular assignment for Romney. When
                                           asked whether he was being considered for any cabinet
                                           position, Carney said flatly, “No.” He said the meeting
                                           would be closed to the press.
“One of the often overlooked but remarkable things about this democracy is that we consistently have
elections and either pass power to a new leader, or voters chose to continue investing the power and
authority of the office in the same party or individual without violence and without the kind of anguish
and disruptions we see in so many countries throughout the world and throughout history,” Carney
said. “The president feels it’s important to continue that tradition.”
The tradition stretches back at least to 1960,
when John F. Kennedy met with Richard
Nixon at Nixon’s home in Key Biscayne,
Fla.
Most of the meetings are marked by tense
rooms, grimaced faces, and an awkward
moment between two ultracompetitive men.
President Clinton gave the Medal of
Freedom to Bob Dole two months after the
1996 election, for example, and President
George W. Bush invited Al Gore to the
White House after he won the Nobel Peace
Prize.
Michael Dukakis met with Bush about a
month after the 1988 election. In the days
after the 2008 election, Obama met with John McCain in Chicago. They pledged to work together,
something that has not transpired. The meeting between Romney and Obama will be the most extensive
meeting ever between the two men. They haven’t seen one another in person since the final debate, on
Oct. 22, and they have never had much of a personal relationship. But Romney has mostly faded from
public view. He took in the movie “Twilight” with his wife, Ann, and dined on pizza afterward, an
outing that was covered by the gossip website TMZ. He went to Disneyland, and was photographed on
roller coasters with some of his sons and grandchildren. He was also photographed by a bystander
                                          while he was pumping gas in California, shown with unkempt
                                          hair and a weary facial expression.
                                           “Mitt Romney at my local gas station,” wrote a user named
                                           mkb95, who posted the photo of Romney pumping gas on the
                                           social media site Reddit. “He looks tired and washed up.”
                                           Romney posted a warmer photo of himself on his Facebook
                                           page, with his arms draped around Ann as he smiles broadly
                                           and wears a blue-t-shirt and khakis. “Hope everyone had a
                                           great Thanskgiving! [sic]” he wrote. “Much to be thankful for
                                           this year.”
you see people there is no difference between these two
clones their both freaks they both are bought and paid
for working for the same bankster interest the federal
reserve who are destroying the republic brick by brick
remember this the next time the republicans throw
some sucker up their next time to fool you both parties
are bought and paid for theirs no two parties theirs
only one its called the globalist party when are you
gonna wake up the way it looks you will fall for it
again SUCKERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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