Mitt Romney
is rattled about being labeled Mr. Etch-A-Sketch:
Romney shot back at reporters who quizzed him about it.
"I'm not doing a press conference right now, OK?” a testy Romney said, grabbing a reporter’s tape recorder. He then hastily called a media avail and took one question.
Romney spewed some nonsense about how his campaign had simply meant that the organizational structure of the general election is different than the primary election. But the question that his communications director was asking was about whether Romney was at risk of moving so far to the right during the primary that he wouldn't be able to appeal to the middle in the general, so the meaning of his Etch-A-Sketch analogy was clear: Romney,
his aide was saying, would be able to erase his hard right past.
Of course, you're not supposed to admit that, especially not when you're boss is known as a calculating flip-flopper, and especially when your boss hasn't yet nailed down the nomination. So Romney went out of his way to reassure the Republican base:
"I'm running as a conservative Republican. I was a conservative Republican governor. I'll be running as a conservative Republican nominee," he said. "The policies and positions are exactly the same."
Those are the right words, but Romney's problem is that they aren't credible. Take for example
this video clip posted by Andrew Kaczkynzi of Mitt Romney in 2002 differentiating himself from conservative Republicans.
"My agenda is different than traditional Republicans," Romney said. Later in the campaign he would
describe himself as "moderate" and say that his views "are progressive."
Now Romney says he was "a severely conservative governor" and that "the biggest misconception would be that I'm a guy that comes from Massachusetts and therefore I can't be conservative."
Romney expects people to take him at his word, but his word constantly changes. It's as if Mitt Romney believes that nothing he says actually has any meaning except for the very last thing he said. He seems to believe that he can simply erase anything that he's said in the past whenever it becomes politically inconvenient—just like an Etch-A-Sketch. So when Mitt Romney's own campaign compared him to an Etch-A-Sketch, it was as damning as it was indelible. Mr. Etch-A-Sketch isn't a label that Mitt Romney is going to be able to erase—and he's right to be rattled about it.