http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2404312,00.htmlIN an essential rite of passage for American politicians, Mitt Romney was ushered into the presence of Baroness Thatcher at a Washington think tank last month. If not quite an official anointing, the handshake and chat with so venerable a figure was an unmistakable sign to conservatives that he was “one of us”.
The improbably handsome right-wing governor of left-wing Massachusetts is generating enormous buzz as the conservative with the best chance of beating the independent-minded Senator John McCain for the 2008 Republican nomination. When his term in office expires in January, Romney is expected to throw himself helter-skelter into the presidential race.
Romney is already crisscrossing the country as chairman of the Republican Governors’ Association, bearing large cheques and a ready smile for candidates in the November mid-term elections. His meeting with Thatcher was swiftly incorporated into his patter on the stump.
“Can you imagine? It was such an extraordinary honour to be able to sit down with her person-to-person,” he said in his first interview with a British newspaper. “We talked about the condition of the world and I said, ‘I’m optimistic that we’ll overcome these problems,’ and she paused and said, ‘We always have’.”