Romney: I'll return Winston Churchill bust to Oval Office

Mitt Romney told a London fundraiser Thursday night that he was "looking forward to the bust of Winston Churchill being in the Oval Office again."

The comment was an allusion to the much-publicized decision by President Obama to return the sculpture of the former Prime Minister to Great Britain after taking office. The president replaced the bust with one of former President Abraham Lincoln.

The Churchill bust, a work of Jacob Epstein, was lent to President George W. Bush in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Conservatives have suggested Obama might have slighted the country's British allies by returning the sculpture, which now resides in the British Embassy in Washington.

Romney told the 250-person deep crowd at the fundraiser — which hauled a reported $2 million for his campaign — that he greatly admired Churchill, who steered the country through World War II.

"You live here, you see the sites day in and day out, but for me as I drive past the sculpture of Winston Churchill and see that great sculpture next to Westminster Abbey and Parliament and with him larger than life, enormous heft of that sculpture suggesting the scale of the the grandeur and the greatness of the man, it tugs at the heart strings to remember the kind of example that was led by Winston Churchill," Romney said.

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