stuck in the mittle

Mitt Romney Still Wishes He Lived in the White House

Mitt Romney made his official return to the public eye on Sunday with a wide-ranging interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace. Ann joined him for part of the chat, which was taped in San Diego earlier this week. Despite son Tagg’s December claim that his father didn’t even want to be president, the couple seemed pretty bummed about the outcome of the 2012 election. “I mourn the fact that he’s not [in the White House],” said Ann, who admitted that she still sometimes cries about the loss. “You know, the great Princess Bride line, ‘mostly dead?’ I’m mostly over it, but not completely. You have moments where you, you know, go back and feel the sorrow of the loss. And so, yes, I think we’re not mostly dead yet.” When asked about what it’s like to watch Washington from the outside, Mitt responded, “I wish I were there. It kills me to not be there, to not be in the White House doing what needs to be done.”

Though he mostly avoided questions about what went wrong with his campaign, Romney admitted that his lack of connection with minority voters was “a real failing.” He also acknowledged that the release of his “47 percent” remarks wasn’t great for his image: “It’s not what I meant. I didn’t express myself as I wished I would have. You know when you speak in private you don’t spend as much time thinking about how something could be twisted and distorted and could come out wrong and be used.” Of course, that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t actually think that Obama’s win can be at least partially attributed to America’s freeloading population: “Obamacare was very attractive, especially to those who did not have health insurance, and they came out in large numbers to vote.”

Romney also took some time to criticize Obama’s handling of the sequester (or sequestration), which he blamed on the President’s failure to broker a deal between Democrats and Republicans. “No one can think that that’s been a success for [Obama],” he said. “The hardest thing about losing is watching this critical moment, this golden moment, just slip away with politics.”

Those who want to hear even more from Romney are in luck. “I’m not going to disappear,” he vowed. He’ll be speaking at CPAC later this month, and he expressed his intention to find a new role for himself within the GOP — whether they want him or not. “As the guy who lost the election, I’m not in a position to tell everyone else how to win,” he said. “I don’t have the credibility to do that anyway, but I still care.”

Romney Still Wishes He Lived in the White House