Last night I finally woke up to the fact that it's an election year, and so I took a look at how the Republican primary is going. Right now the media attention seems to be dwelling on the way Eric Fehrnstrom, Mitt Romney’s aide, compared his candidate’s campaign to an Etch A Sketch on Wednesday. Gingrich and Santorum scented blood more or less instantly, and are busy making as much political hay as possible out of the comment.
Whether you’re inclined to read Fehrnstrom’s comment in a positive light or a negative one, I think the basic metaphor involved hits a bit too close to home for any candidate. He said that “you can kind of shake it [the campaign] up and start all over again.” That means that the primary campaign and the general election campaign of a presidential candidate can be two very different things.
The Romney campaign is desperate to spin this as meaning nothing more than that they have the opportunity to reorganize and regroup if they win the Republican nomination. The other candidates are having none of that, though! Both Santorum and Gingrich have hoisted up Etch A Sketches at press events, eager to turn the toys into symbols of a candidate that will say one thing to conservatives in the primaries and another thing to moderates in the general.
I don’t begrudge either Santorum or Gingrich the chance to score some easy points when their opponent hands them such a wonderfully vivid metaphor. If I were on their campaigns, though, I’d be careful not to press too hard. No matter who wins the nomination, the Republican candidate is going to moderate his conservatism once the general election is underway. If they harp on the Etch A Sketch too much now, it could return to haunt them a few months down the road.
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