1 of 3. Former U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney stands onstage for remarks to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, March 15, 2013.

OXON HILL, Maryland | Fri Mar 15, 2013 7:47pm EDT

OXON HILL, Maryland (Reuters) - At a gathering for conservatives to plot their future, there was a stark reminder of the past on Friday as failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney made his first public speech since election night.

"I am sorry that I won't be your president," Romney told the audience of the Conservative Political Action Conference, "but I will be your co-worker and I will stand shoulder to shoulder beside you."

Since he accepted defeat to President Barack Obama in the early hours of the morning on November 7 in Boston, Romney has largely vanished from view. He is occasionally spotted on the ski slopes with his family, pumping gas, or shopping at Costco.

He and his wife Ann have retired to La Jolla, California, where the Romney family keeps a home, although they did give an interview to Fox News last month.

The former Massachusetts governor was the first losing presidential candidate in nearly 25 years not to be in Washington on Inauguration Day.

Looking tanned since his time off the campaign trail, Romney delivered what sounded very like his campaign speech. He told vignettes about the Americans he met as he traveled across the country on the way to his eventual defeat.

Romney said he realized the awkwardness of his position.

"As someone who just lost the last election, I'm probably not the best person to chart the course for the next election," he said.

ROCKY RELATIONSHIP

Romney has never had a simple relationship with the conservative base, which always suspected he was too moderate on healthcare, abortion and other issues.

In past years, Romney won the conference's straw poll for preferred presidential candidate, but audiences like CPAC are often filled with the sort of Republicans who were most suspicious of his conservative credentials.

Appearing at the same event last year, Romney declared himself to be "severely conservative." That strained formulation did not warm conservatives' hearts and led to ridicule from some in the media.

For many gathered at a hotel here south of Washington, the lesson from Romney's loss is a simple one: Republicans nominated a candidate who wasn't conservative enough.

On Thursday, Texas Governor Rick Perry, once Romney's rival in the presidential primary, told the crowd: "The popular media narrative is that this country has shifted away from conservative ideas, as evidence by the last two presidential elections. That's what they think, that's what they say. That might be true if Republicans had actually nominated conservative candidates in 2008 and 2012."

"The fact is the base didn't come out for him," said Bob Vander Plaats, the president of the Family Leader and a prominent social conservative in the early-voting state of Iowa. "No matter how much we did to push our base towards him that was a hard rope to push."

Romney was received warmly by the audience and the former candidate thanked them for their "earnest support."

He did have one warning for conservatives.

"We particularly need to hear from the governors of the blue and purple states," he said, advising conservatives not to give up on the states where he lost to Obama.

Romney mentioned two governors — New Jersey's Chris Christie and Virginia's Bob McDonnell — who were not invited to participate in the influential conference.

Both governors have been criticized for taking positions that part with Republican orthodoxy. But a Reuters/Ipsos online poll on Friday showed Christie as the Republican with the best rating against possible 2016 Democratic opponents Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden. [ID:nL1N0C76P2]

LARGELY IGNORED

Since his defeat, Romney has rarely been mentioned by conservatives.

Speaking a few hours before Romney, Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan, the Republican vice presidential nominee, centered his remarks on the federal budget and made no mention of his former running mate.

In the aftermath of the last campaign, Republicans have set about refashioning their image, moving away from Romney's campaign positions.

Romney's campaign was marked by a hawkish view on immigration and was hindered by his remarks in secretly recorded video deploring nearly half of all Americans as "victims."

Now, Republican congressmen are playing leading roles in trying to reform immigration laws and leaders are encouraging reaching out to African-American and Hispanic voters, two groups that backed Obama by wide margins.

Influential Republicans like Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal have called on their party to embrace the people Romney appeared to reject in his infamous "47 percent" remarks about voters who receive government aid.

Despite his downfall, Romney was undeterred.

"It's fashionable in some circles to be pessimistic about America, about conservative solutions, about the Republican Party," Romney said. "I utterly reject that pessimism."

(Editing by Alistair Bell and Claudia Parsons)

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U.S. Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President for Government Affairs Bruce Josten gestures during remarks to the Reuters Washington Summit in the Reuters newsroom in Washington, November 7, 2011.

WASHINGTON | Thu Jan 10, 2013 8:12pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As Republicans in the Congress struggle to find a strategy for forcing big spending cuts on President Barack Obama, some conservative voices are warning against taking the country to the brink of a debt default as the strategy for winning the budget wars.

"We would encourage the administration and the Congress of the United States, first and foremost, don't default. That's a bad idea," said U.S. Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President Bruce Josten on Thursday.

An historic U.S. government default could send global financial markets reeling as the world's biggest economy would not be able to borrow money needed to operate its federal government or pay certain creditors - many of them in Beijing and Tokyo.

The matter will come to a head in mid- to late-February, when the Treasury Department will run out of ways to finance the country's debt without breaching a $16.4 trillion debt limit set in law.

A showdown between Democrats and Republicans is looming after Obama warned that he will not negotiate on the debt limit.

House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, politically weakened by recent budget battles including the "fiscal cliff," has different ideas. He is insisting that any debt increase be accompanied by spending cuts and government reforms of a greater amount than the debt ceiling hike.

Republicans want those savings to be mainly achieved by reforming huge "entitlement" programs such as the Social Security retirement plan and the Medicare and Medicaid healthcare programs for the elderly, disabled and poor.

In each of the past four years, Washington has piled an additional $1 trillion onto its mountain of debt. "It's a big damn deal," said Josten's boss, Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue, during a Thursday press conference.

And while the nation's largest business group does not like the idea of even flirting with default, it does think that Washington needs to "focus" on its debt problems, Donohue said, telling reporters that entitlement program savings were its highest priority in 2013.

Earlier this week, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a conservative firebrand who unsuccessfully ran in 2012 for the Republican presidential nomination, issued his own warning of peril for fellow Republicans.

Engaging in a debt limit fight, he told MSNBC, was "frankly, a dead loser." In the end, he predicted, Republicans would face so much pressure that "they'll cave."

That was followed by an op-ed column in Thursday's Wall Street Journal in which conservative Republican operative Karl Rove warned his party that it likely will have to "support a debt increase all Republicans wish" was not necessary and that Republicans should not hold out for the "perfect."

The Republican goal of winning structural changes to entitlement programs, Rove also said, may be beyond reach for now. "That's the cost of losing the 2012 election," he wrote.

MULLING THEIR OPTIONS

Democrats and Republicans are still gauging how best to position themselves for the upcoming debt limit fight, as well as additional battles over steep automatic government spending cuts due to begin on March 1. That will be followed by a March 31 deadline for either enacting additional funding measures or shutting down government agencies.

Boehner's House Republicans will hold a retreat next week in Williamsburg, Virginia, to try to map out a strategy. House Democrats will do the same in early February in Leesburg, Virginia outside of Washington, D.C.

Spokesmen for Boehner and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell would not comment directly when asked whether either leader was willing to chance a government default in their quest to trim spending.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Monday, Boehner said that the debt limit is "one point of leverage" but not the "ultimate leverage." That, he was quoted saying, is the automatic spending cuts known as the "sequester."

Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith did not comment directly when asked whether the Speaker was signaling that he would step away from the default "cliff."

But Smith said: "The American people simply won't support an increase in the nation's debt limit unless it is accompanied by real spending cuts and reforms."

As U.S. government debt races toward the $16.4 trillion limit, both parties are looking at their options for dealing with the problem. Here are some of them:

- The Wall Street Journal speculated that monthly debt ceiling increases could be the best Congress can agree to. That is a solution that likely would give the Treasury a gigantic headache in managing the debt;

- Democrats, according to a Senate Democratic aide, are weighing whether to bring back a mechanism that McConnell devised for 2011 and 2012: Giving Obama the power to raise the debt ceiling. If a super-majority of Congress voted against the move, it could stop it;

- Obama has rejected the idea in the past, but some Democrats nonetheless are considering using the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as a way out. It states that the "validity of the public debt ... shall not be questioned." So, they reason, Obama on his own authority could raise the debt limit. This could stir up a huge legal fight that likely would unsettle financial markets.

- Minting a $1 trillion platinum coin. It's an oddball idea, but there has been some discussion of Treasury using the coin to back additional borrowing;

- A legal scholars' solution: The Senate Democratic aide said some are wondering whether a determination could be made that appropriations bills enacted to provide government funding would supersede the debt limit law, implicitly allowing continued borrowing.

Amid the warnings against a default, some Republican lawmakers nonetheless argue that now is the time to take a stand on the debt limit.

If Obama is unwilling to reduce spending, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama told Reuters, "Republicans should use, will have to use, for the sake of the country, any leverage they have to accomplish that goal. And the debt ceiling is one of the things that can be effective in helping to reduce spending."

(Additional reporting by David Lawder Editing by Fred Barbash and Eric Walsh)

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U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (C) departs the senate floor with an aide after a senate vote in the early morning hours at the U.S. Capitol in Washington January 1, 2013.

CHICAGO | Wed Jan 2, 2013 8:22pm EST

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress prevented hefty tax hikes and spending cuts with a "fiscal cliff" deal this week, but grassroots conservatives are already seeking 2014 primary challengers for high-profile Republican lawmakers who backed the deal.

Few challengers have yet come forward. But fiscally conservative activists irate at Republicans who voted to raise some taxes without cutting spending are casting about for opponents to Republicans including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and senators Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.

"Many people here have watched Mitch McConnell's voting record and are dissatisfied with what they've seen," said Eric Wilson, executive director of the Kentucky 9/12 project, a Tea Party group in McConnell's home state. "There are some potential candidates working in the background and doing the right thing" including visiting Kentucky's conservatives to gauge support.

Wilson declined to divulge names, citing McConnell's fundraising prowess that allowed him to amass almost $19 million for his 2008 re-election bid. McConnell could not be reach for comment.

"Anyone who sticks their neck out now will get their head cut off," he added. "But there are definitely people here with real potential."

In the 2010 midterm elections the Tea Party movement took the Republican "establishment" by surprise with high-profile primary victories over more conventional candidates and brought a wave of freshmen to the House of Representatives.

But despite successes in the primaries in 2012, most notably the defeat of Indiana's six-term Republican Senator Dick Lugar by state treasurer Richard Mourdock, conservative candidates fared poorly in the general election.

Tea Party supporters claim 2014 should be different as lower turnout in midterm years allows fiscal conservatives to punch above their weight.

"Presidential politics in 2012 sucked oxygen out of the conversation in local races," said Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, which coordinates with Tea Party groups around the country. "So to us, 2014 looks more like 2010."

After some disastrous showings by Tea Party candidates, most notably Christine O'Donnell in Delaware in 2010 who ended up running a television ad denying she was a witch, conservatives are on the lookout for credible candidates who can run effective campaigns and raise sufficient funds for a general election.

It is reasonable to expect challenges to some Republicans from the right in 2014, said James Henson, a politics professor at the University of Texas in Austin.

"Whether they use the name Tea Party or not is irrelevant," he said. "The DNA of their movement has now been spliced into the DNA of the Republican Party."

'IN MAJOR TROUBLE'

Previous battles in Congress have been marked by Tea Party activists around the country bombarding their elected representatives, mostly Republicans, calling on them to hold the conservative line.

Many did not bother ahead of the fiscal cliff deal, a bipartisan agreement to raise tax rates on incomes of more than $450,000 per household.

"We knew the Republican leadership would cave in," said Debbie Dooley, a coordinator at national umbrella group Tea Party Patriots and a founder of the Atlanta Tea Party. "So we didn't expend a lot of energy on this issue."

Instead, Dooley said activists in her home state of Georgia are focused on educating voters about America's spiraling debt and seeking a replacement for Saxby Chambliss, who was forced into a runoff election in 2008 and only narrowly managed to return to the Senate.

No one has announced a challenge to Chambliss, but Georgia representatives Tom Price and Paul Broun are seen as potential candidates. Chambliss could not be reached for comment.

"If a credible candidate comes forward, then Saxby Chambliss is in major trouble," Dooley said.

In South Carolina, Joe Dugan of the Myrtle Beach Tea Party said there are credible alternatives to Senator Lindsey Graham, including three representatives elected in 2010 who have been reliably conservative on most issues.

"I am over 90 percent certain that if there is a reliably conservative candidate in 2014 he will have my total support," against Senator Graham, Dugan said.

Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity which has backing from the billionaire oil and gas brothers Charles and David Koch, said it is too early to say whether the group will get involved in primary challenges in 2014.

But the group, which raised $140 million in 2012 compared to $51 million in 2011, will focus on educating voters in 2013 on how their representatives voted on the fiscal cliff and the upcoming U.S. debt limit debate.

"We aim to hold elected officials accountable," he said. "Lawmakers will not be judged solely on how they voted on the fiscal cliff, but it is a big vote to get wrong."

Some conservative activists admit they face a steep climb at best if they want to unseat their local Republican representative. The West Chester Tea Party in House Speaker John Boehner's district in southwestern Ohio, for instance, has begun looking for a challenger to him even though he amassed nearly $22 million for his 2012 re-election bid.

"We've been getting emails from around the district and around the country asking if this is the best we can do for a representative," West Chester Tea Party member Ann Becker said. "That's not an easy question to answer."

"It will be a David-versus-Goliath battle if we do find somebody, but nothing is impossible," she added.

Unlike Indiana's Dick Lugar, who refused to recant on key votes that angered Tea Party activists, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch tacked rightward to defeat a primary challenge in 2012.

The University of Texas' Henson said that in the months to come the behavior of Republican lawmakers who voted for the fiscal cliff may show how seriously they take the threat of primary challenges next year.

"We will have to see what kind of compensatory behavior we see from Republicans," Henson said. "I suspect we will see more conservative Republicans try to make up for the fiscal cliff by trying to revert to form on other issues."

(Editing by Alistair Bell and Lisa Shumaker)

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