Etch-A-Sketch (Mitt Romney presidential campaign, 2012)

A top aide to Romney was asked how their campaigning would change if and when Romney wins the Republican nomination. He answered it would be like an Etch-A-Sketch to shake-up and start over. Santorum and Gingrich criticized Romney for this, and Ron Paul criticized Santorum and Gingrich for being petty and ignoring other issues

This article contains content from Wikipedia An article on this subject has been nominated for deletion on Wikipedia: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ Etch-a-sketch gaffe Current versions of the GNU FDL article on WP may contain information useful to the improvement of this article

WP+ NO DEL

The gaffe's context is a US political scene in which changing one's political positions is equated with lack of integrity or insincerity and is called "flip-flopping". While the suspicion that political candidates do not vote their conscience on political issues is widespread enough for "flip-flopping" to be a common criticism, and considered enough of a smear to dirty rivals just by its mention, there are scant few events in which someone in the know testifies that a candidate has done this.

On March 21, 2012, Eric Fehrnstrom, a spokesman for 2012 US presidential candidate Wikipedia:Mitt Romney, used the Using Etch A Sketch as a metaphor for how Romney intended to re-invent his campaign for the general election after a more conservative-leaning primary campaign. When asked, during a CNN interview, "Is there a concern that the pressure from Santorum and Gingrich might force the governor to tack so far to the right, it would hurt him with moderate voters in the general election?", Fehrnstrom replied, "You hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It's almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again." Romney's rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, Wikipedia:Rick Santorum and Wikipedia:Newt Gingrich, seized on the comment as meaning that Romney's political views were a Wikipedia:tabula rasa, and that he did not hold true conservative values. Each held up an Etch A Sketch at his own political Wikipedia:media event, thus giving the toy additional unexpected national visibility. Candidate Ron Paul created a 41-second TV ad criticizing Gingrich and Santorum for being petty and not talking about “$15 trillion in debt, 12 million unemployed, and USA at war”.

This article may contain material from Wikipedia An article on this subject has been redirected to another page on WP: Etch-a-sketch gaffe Current versions of the GNU FDL article on Wikipedia may contain information useful to the improvement of this article

WP R E D

The Romney campaign responded that the quote was in regards to organizational structure, and that Romney would continue talking about the same conservative issues and policies.

Mitt Romney explained the words of his advisor by saying, "A general election campaign takes on a different profile. The issues I'm running on will be exactly the same. … I was a conservative Republican governor, and I’ll be running as a conservative Republican nominee."‬ A poll by Wikipedia:Pew Research Center taken in the days after the event found that a majority of voters were unaware that the comment had even been said, with a plurality of those that had heard of it saying that it had no effect on their opinion of Romney.