Washington » Ten blocks from the White House he had hoped to win, Mitt Romney egged on Republican senators Wednesday to push against President Barack Obama and his Democratic partners' effort to move the country to the left.
"I think the American people are seeing through what's happening," Romney told a crowd of GOP senators and Republican donors at the Newseum in Washington. "The Democrats are trying to use this [economic] crisis as a way to advance their philosophy of the supremacy of government, and I don't think that Americans are being fooled."
Romney, who lost his presidential bid to Sen. John McCain more than a year ago, headlined the annual National Republican Senatorial Committee fundraiser Wednesday night, one of several high-profile appearances lately for the former Massachusetts governor. The move, observers say, is one way to keep Romney's name in the minds of his party's base and curry favor with Republican leaders.
While Romney hasn't ruled out a second bid for the White House in 2012, he is plotting a political course that could land him once again on the presidential trail.
Wednesday, Romney heralded Republican fights to block the Democrats more leftist policies and argued that Obama and the Democrat-led Congress were pushing America away from its moorings of free enterprise and personal freedom.
Romney threw out typical red meat to the crowd -- that Democrats were trying to bolster unions undemocratically and damage businesses through a carbon tax -- but he also waxed more philosophical, warning the senators and party backers that America was at a precipice of losing its position as the leading model of democracy and freedom.
"Among our liberal friends, there's a strain [of thought] in the sense of monarchism," Romney said, quickly noting that liberals don't want a king, but a king-like system, that "The government should be the sovereign, [that ] the government knows best. That idea is permeating in Washington and in other parts of the country."
Shortly after his free-wheeling remarks, Romney was set to hop a plane to New York City for another Republican donor event. That schedule can't hurt, observers say.
"Clearly, he wants to keep his options open," says Saul Anuzis, the former Michigan Republican Party chairman. "By anybody's calculations, he would be a leading candidate for 2012. So I think it makes sense for him to continue to keep a high profile and meet with party leaders, and help raise money and be a speaker and continue in that role."
Later on, Anuzis says, Romney can still choose whether to jump in the presidential race a second time, and he'll have the option because he's kept busy on the Republican circuit.
Romney's moves stand in contrast to another potential 2012 candidate: former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
The Alaska governor's political action committee reportedly agreed for her to speak at the 2009 Republican House-Senate dinner, but her Alaska office hadn't agreed, so Palin was pulled as the keynote speaker.
Anuzis, who lost his race for Republican National Committee chairman, says the difference is that Romney had an established national campaign to fall back on while Palin was under the umbrella of Sen. John McCain's presidential camp.
"I think for someone who was thrown in the national spotlight like she was, they're trying to find their sea legs," Anuzis said.
