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Jewish World Review
March 22, 2012/ 28 Adar, 5772
Mitt Romney's latest gaffe may be etched in history
By
Dana Milbank
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
ARBUTUS, Md.---It is typical of Mitt Romney’s luck that, on the morning after he all but secured the Republican presidential nomination, his campaign became embroiled in a controversy over a 1950s plastic toy.
On Wednesday, hours after Romney’s 12-point victory over Rick Santorum in the Illinois primary
silenced most of the remaining doubters, senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom went on CNN and gave new meaning to the term “game change.” “I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign,” he said, explaining why the fight for conservative primary voters has not pushed Romney too far to the right. “Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch a Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again.” Etch a Sketch? Actually, it appeared more like Romney was playing Chutes and Ladders: He just landed on Space 87 and slid all the way back to 24. Suddenly, Romney’s event at an American Legion hall here in the Baltimore suburbs, was transformed from a gab session about gas prices into an Etch a Sketch fest. Alice Stewart, a Santorum aide, brought a bagful of pocket-size Etch a Sketches and handed them out in the parking lot. (Your correspondent, threatened with arrest by a Maryland trooper who was blocking the door to keep reporters from the melee, was rewarded by Stewart with a blue Etch a Sketch.) “Conservative principles should be written in stone, not on Etch a Sketch,” the Santorum aide declared righteously. You sunk my battleship! Thirty feet away, Romney was shaking hands. Reporters inquired: Would he address the toy story? “We think gas prices are more important,” spokesman Rick Gorka replied, examining the reporters’ Etch a Sketches. Santorum, who has taken Romney apart as if playing Operation, posed in his car Wednesday with the rectangular device. His campaign tweeted out the photo with the caption “@RickSantorum studying up on @MittRomney policy positions.” “You take whatever he said and you can shake it up and it will be gone, and he’s going to draw a whole new picture for the general election,” Santorum crowed at a campaign stop in Louisiana. Also campaigning in Louisiana, Newt Gingrich, who has turned the trail into a round of Twister, gave an Etch a Sketch to a young girl in the audience and told her, “You could now be a presidential candidate.” Will Romney ever end his string of debilitating gaffes? As the Magic 8 Ball says: Outlook not so good. After the New Hampshire primary, Romney appeared to have it made in Candy Land. But Santorum and Gingrich felled his inevitability like dominoes, and — Sorry! — Romney finds himself in a coast-to-coast game of Connect Four with competitors who were not supposed to have been in his league but who are benefiting from voters’ disenchantment with him. There is some enthusiasm for the Republican front-runner. Outside the Romney event here, retiree Jim Wilson sat in his GMC truck decorated bumper to bumper with Romney paraphernalia and American flags. Wilson, who lives outside Charlottesville, has been on the road since August, to each primary state except Colorado — and that’s only because he wanted to make it to Kansas in time. “That’s a bunch of horse apples,” he said when asked about Romney’s enthusiasm gap. “Look at this crowd,” he said, between puffs on his pipe. True enough. Two hundred supporters filled the hall with at least that many outside. “This is really something,” the candidate exulted to the overflow crowd in the parking lot. But holding that enthusiasm has been, for Romney, quite a Rubik’s Cube. Inside, the candidate talked about health care, education, Iran, the economy — anything but children’s toys. Although it was not particularly warm in the hall, Romney ended by saying that the temperature had “reached 140 in here” — and retreated while glaring at reporters shouting Etch a Sketch questions. Realizing that he could not shake the queries, Romney returned a few minutes later for a “short Q&A,” known by the jargon of “press avail.” It lasted 90 seconds. “The issues I’m running on will be exactly the same,” he declared in response to an Etch a Sketch question. “I’m running as a conservative Republican. I was a conservative Republican governor.” So he was a conservative when he enacted Romneycare? “Can you guarantee to Republican voters that you won’t take more moderate positions?” CNN’s Jim Acosta asked. “I answered the question,” Romney replied. “An avail is more than one question, governor, if you don’t mind my saying so,” Acosta told him. Romney grinned. “This wasn’t an avail. It was a chance to respond to a question I didn’t get a chance to respond to.” Sounds sketchy.
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Previously:
• 03/20/12 Supreme Court conceives of life after death
• 03/15/12 Conservative for Obama: The British PM as campaign prop
• 03/14/12 In Section 60, a silent search for meaning
• 03/13/12 Super Friends, unite
• 03/12/12 It's time to believe: Romney's a winner
• 03/07/12 Settling in to Washington's ways
• 03/06/12 AIPAC beats the drums of war
• 03/05/12 Did Republicans forget the women's vote?
• 02/29/12 Mitt Romney's acceptance speech, in (mostly) his own words
• 02/28/12 Common ground becomes a great divide
• 02/27/12 An expert witness for the GOP gender gap
• 02/21/12 Where Romney shines
• 02/15/12 A Republican death wish?
• 02/14/12Obama's budget games
• 02/13/12 Are GOPers playing right into Obama's hands?
• 02/08/12 Obama pumps the compressor of Joe Hudy's Extreme Marshmallow Cannon
• 02/07/12 Abramoff's atonement
• 02/01/12 Why we in the media just love Newt
• 01/31/12 The end of the road for Newt Gingrich?
• 01/25/12 Gingrich is Obama's best surrogate
• 01/24/12 Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney's attack dog
• 01/16/12 Mitt Romney's Al Gore problem
• 01/12/12 Kamikaze Gingrich, on the loose in South Carolina
• 01/11/12 Journalists' campaign trail secrets revealed
• 01/10/12 Mitt Romney's money problem
• 01/09/12 Newtonian exceptionalism
• 01/05/12 Mitt Romney out of control
• 01/04/12 Indecision 2012: In Iowa and the GOP
• 01/03/12 Rick Santorum's curious closing argument
• 12/28/11 A few cracks in my crystal ball
• 12/23/11 A few cracks in my crystal ball
• 12/20/11 Strange brews and views?
• 12/19/11 Cellphone ban would be a distraction
• 12/15/11 Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell and the Malfunction Minuet
• 12/14/11 The presidential auction of 2012
• 12/12/11 Newt's tactics comes back to haunt him
• 12/06/11 Can an anthem save Occupy non-movement?
• 12/05/11 The winner of the GOP campaign: Washington
• 11/30/11 Barney the bully: Congressman Frank's other legacy
• 11/23/11 Jon Kyl's search-and-destroy mission
• 11/21/11 Pay to play, brought to you by Washington
• 11/17/11 Big enough to save the supercommittee?
• 11/16/11 Why Newt Gingrich won't last
• 11/08/11 The 2012 campaign gets seedier
• 11/06/11 A Machiavellian model for Obama
• 11/03/11 The Herman Cain crack-up
• 11/01/11 Cain can --- he will survive
• 10/27/11 Stuntmen of the supercommittee
• 10/26/11 Democrats on the sidelines
• 10/24/11 Rick Perry's birther Parade
• 10/24/11 The birthers eat their own
• 10/19/11 The GOP's middle man
• 10/17/11 The waiting for nothing Congress
• 10/12/11 Sparsely occupied D.C.: Why the movement hasn't caught on
• 10/10/11 Can Obama strike an alliance with Occupy Wall Street?
• 10/06/11 Chris Christie, such a presidential tease
• 10/05/11 Obama and his foot soldiers go toe to toe
• 09/28/11 Cain could deliver
• 09/26/11 Republicans? Mr. Nice Guys?
• 09/22/11 Why Ron Paul is winning the GOP primary
• 09/21/11 I am a job creator who creates no jobs
• 09/20/11 Obama launches a revolution
• 09/19/11 Dems for Romney?
• 09/14/11 ‘Supercommittee’? More than stupor committee
• 09/07/11 Mitt Romney finds his (corporate) voice
• 09/01/11 The infallible Dick Cheney
• 08/31/11 This liberal says Perry is the ultimate conservative candidate
• 08/29/11 Wanted: More bite from Obama the Great Nibbler
• 08/10/11 How Rep. Austin Scott betrayed his Tea Party roots
• 08/09/11 The most powerful man on Earth?
• 08/08/11 The FAA shutdown and the new rules of Washington
• 08/04/11 Lt. Col. Allen West fires a round at the Tea Party
• 08/03/11 Government on autopilot
• 08/02/11 Dems mourn debt deal like death
• 07/27/11 Life imitates sport
• 07/26/11 Obama and Boehner take on Washington
• 07/21/11 Why Americans are angry at Congress
• 07/20/11 The new party of Reagan
• 07/18/11 Rob Portman, the boring Midwesterner who could bring sanity to the debt debate
• 07/13/11 John Boehner's bind
• 07/04/11 Stephen Colbert, Karl Rove and the mockery of campaign finance
• 07/01/11 President Puts Up His Dukes, As He Ought To
• 06/28/11 Rod Blagojevich verdict: All shook up
• 06/27/11 Progressives voice their anger at Obama
• 06/24/11 ‘Mission accomplished,’ Obama style
• 06/22/11 Jon Huntsman's first step toward oblivion
• 06/21/11 Scott Walker finds making bumper stickers is easier than creating jobs
• 06/20/11 A day of awkwardness with Mitt Romney
• 06/06/11 Hubris and humility: Sarah Palin and Robert Gates on tour
• 06/02/11 The Weiner roast
• 06/01/11 Congress clocks in to clock out
• 05/30/11 Hermanator II: No More Mr. Gadfly
• 05/24/11 How Obama has empowered Netanyahu
• 05/24/11 Pawlenty bends his truth-telling
• 05/20/11 Default deniers say it's all a hoax
• 05/18/11: Gingrich gives voice to moderation
• 05/17/11: Donald Trump and the House of Horrors
• 05/16/11: The medical mystery of Mitt Romney
• 05/12/11: The body impolitic: Schock photos should tempt lawmakers to cover up
• 05/10/11: Muskets in hand, tea party blasts House Republicans
• 05/09/11: The GOP debate: America -- and the party -- needs the grown-ups
• 05/05/11: Mitch Daniels, an alternative to scary
• 05/03/11: Obama's victory lap
• 05/02/11: How the journalist prom got out of control
• 04/28/11: Obama's birther day: Why did he lower himself by appearing in the briefing room?
• 04/27/11: Obama, lost in thought
• 04/24/11: Andrew Breitbart and the rifts on the right
• 04/22/11: Ten Commandments for 2012
• 04/21/11: Obama likes Facebook. Facebook likes Obama.
• 04/18/11: Without Nancy Pelosi, Obama is adrift
• 04/15/11: If progressives ran the world
• 04/14/11: Faith in political apostasy
• 04/13/11: One man's revolution is another's political expediency
• 04/11/11: Shutdown theatrics
• 04/06/11: Paul Ryan's irresponsible budget
• 04/05/11: Robots in Congress? Yes, we replicant!
• 04/04/11: Robert Gibbs, Facebook and the White House corporate placement service
• 04/01/11: Haley Barbour, the fat cats' candidate
• 03/31/11: Republican freshmen in House shut down compromise, and possibly the government
• 03/30/11: Coburn and Durbin, the dynamic duo of the debt crisis
• 03/28/11: The Obama doctrine: A gray area the size of Libya
• 03/24/11: Dems as Weiners
• 03/23/11: Obama's quick trip from tyrant to weakling
• 03/17/11: Who's afraid of Elizabeth Warren?
• 03/15/11: The underwear flap over Bradley Manning
• 03/10/11: In Senate's debt debate, talk isn't cheap
• 03/09/11: With Obama's new Gitmo policy, Administration officials had some 'splainin to do
• 03/02/11: Issa press aide scandal is like bad reality TV
• 02/25/11: Jay Carney: Mouthpiece for an inscrutable White House
• 02/14/11: The Donald trumps the pols at CPAC
• 02/09/11: Arianna Huffington's ideological transformation
© 2011, Washington Post Writers Group
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