Mitt Romney will have a private lunch with President Obama
at the White House on Thursday, their first meeting since the Republican
nominee lost the election to the incumbent Nov. 6.
The White House revealed Wednesday that the men will have
lunch in the private dining room of the White House. It will be their first
extensive meeting ever; other than their three debates during the fall
campaign, Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney have had only a few brief encounters.
“It will be the first opportunity they have had to visit
since the election,” the White House said in a statement. “There will be no
press coverage of the meeting.”
Mr. Obama said at his first postelection news conference
Nov. 14 that he hoped to meet with Mr. Romney to “see if there are some ways
that we can potentially work together.” He praised the former Massachusetts
governor’s success in turning around the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, as well
as his proposals to make government more efficient.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the lunch meeting came
together at Mr. Obama’s request. He also noted the two men share a desire to
help streamline government, citing Mr. Obama’s 2011 request for Congress to
reinstate presidential authority to reorganize and consolidate the federal
government.
“[The president] looks forward to having this meeting with
Gov. Romney. It will be a private lunch — only the two men will be in the
room,” Mr. Carney said, deflecting requests from the press to open at least
part of the lunch to the media. “I’m sure it will be a useful discussion.”
The president does not plan to ask Mr. Romney for anything
specific, said Mr. Carney, who also shot down any notion that Mr. Obama would
offer his former opponent a formal or informal position in the president’s
second term.
Since the acrimonious debates late in the campaign, the two
men have exchanged repeated jabs — even after the election — prompting
questions from reporters about Mr. Obama’s feelings about Mr. Romney going into
Thursday’s one-on-one lunch meeting.
“Well, he’s happy about the election’s outcome, if that’s
what you mean,” Mr. Carney joked.
A few days after the election, Mr. Romney in a phone call
with supporters blamed his loss in part on “gifts” that the president had
bestowed on key constituencies.
“With regards to the young people, for instance, a
forgiveness of college loan interest was a big gift,” Mr. Romney said. “Free
contraceptives were very big with young, college-aged women. And then, finally:
Obamacare also made a difference for them, because as you know, anybody now 26
years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents’ plan, and
that was a big gift to young people. They turned out in large numbers, a larger
share in this election even than in 2008.”
Many Republican officials, such as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal,
rebuked Mr. Romney for his comments and said the GOP needs to focus on being
more inclusive.
Presidents sitting down in a private meeting with their
opponents after the election is a tradition, Mr. Carney said, and one that Mr.
Obama wanted to honor.
“One of the remarkable things about this democracy is that
we consistently have elections and either pass power on to the new leader or
else choose a new leader because voters chose without violence and without the
kind of anguish and distortion that you see in so many countries around the
world,” he said. “And we feel that it’s entirely appropriate — and the
president feels this — to continue this tradition.”
While in Washington, Mr. Romney also reportedly will visit
with his former running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who is heavily
involved in the GOP’s negotiations with the Obama administration to resolve the
government’s “fiscal cliff” of looming tax hikes and spending cuts.
culled from washingtontimes
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