Mitt Romney and Barack Obama to meet for White House lunch Thursday

President Barack Obama and defeated Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney will eat lunch together Tuesday at the White House.

"Governor Romney will have a private lunch at the White House with President Obama in the Private Dining Room," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday via a written statement. "It will be the first opportunity they have had to visit since the election. There will be no press coverage of the meeting."

CNN’s Political Ticker blog reported that while in Washington, “Romney will also meet with his former running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

“Romney has mostly stayed out of the spotlight since his Election Night remarks in Boston,” the Political Ticker blog continued. “He was spotted taking in the latest installment of the ‘Twilight’ movie franchise with his family, and on Thanksgiving shared a photo with his wife Ann on his official Facebook page. Two Romney aides said Wednesday the former GOP nominee will be subletting space at the offices of his son Tagg's investment firm Solamere Capital in Boston. Mitt Romney won't be joining the firm himself, the aides said.”

The Atlantic columnist Jay Graham speculated about possible topics that might be discussed at the Thursday lunch rendezvous: “Obama has charged ahead with a demand for higher taxes on the rich, giving little heed to Romney's campaign-trail suggestion that revenue be increased by closing loopholes. That hasn't stopped speculation that the president could make a bipartisan gesture by appointing Romney to be Commerce secretary, Treasury secretary, or the first to fill a ‘business secretary’ post that Obama offhandedly suggested late in the campaign — although any of those seems farfetched and haven't gotten any public encouragement from the White House.”

Stuart Stevens, the chief strategist for Romney’s campaign, penned an op-ed piece the Washington Post published Wednesday beneath the headline, “Mitt Romney: A good man. The right fight.”

“Nobody liked Romney except voters,” Stevens wrote. “What began in a small field in New Hampshire grew into a national movement. It wasn’t our campaign, it was Mitt Romney. He bested the competition in debates, and though he was behind almost every candidate in the primary at one time or the other, he won the nomination and came very close to winning the presidency.”

Jamshid Ghazi Askar is a graduate of BYU's J. Reuben Clark Law School and member of the Utah State Bar. Contact him at jaskar@desnews.com or 801-236-6051.