The latest American political news has Mitt Romney Campaign Advisor Eric Fehrnstrom making a statement that some think could cost Romney the race to represent the Republican Party in the fall Presidential Election.
During a CNN segment, Eric Fehrnstrom said that altering Romney’s campaign strategy was “almost like an Etch A Sketch. You shake it up and start all over again.”
The comment Eric Fehrnstrom made was, at first glance, harmless. On its face, it’s true that political campaigns “reset” their approach. The trouble is, Fehrnstrom represents Mitt Romney, who’s already considered to be a “flip-flopper” who does not hold a point of view he really believes.
Who can forget the now classic interview Romney gave to Fox News’ Brett which starts off with Baier asking Mitt about the charge that he’s not authentic, one given by a Newt Gingrich-supporter, and then goes to hit him with the view that he makes decisions based on “political expediency.”
And it gets worse from there.
This is what Eric Fehrnstrom said on CNN.
Since then two actions have happened: Etch A Sketch has become a Google Trend, and some observers have said this means Romney’s campaign is in trouble.
I’m going to take a different view on that.
As long as the voters vote for Mitt Romney, and so far that’s what’s happening to the point where he has a clear delegate lead over his next closest challenger, the white-supremacist-loving Rick Santorum, what someone who’s not Mitt says is not a real issue. Now if Mitt made the Etch A Sketch comment himself, that would have been a massive blunder because it came from him. But the reality is it did not, and Eric Fehrnstrom’s not running for high office, Romney is.
At best, the comment, which was fueled by Twitter (and I’m not at all discounting that), will not last past next week’s news. What’s fascinating is that Twitter was the booster rocket that propelled the statement into the media spotlight, but it’s also a reflection of how the Twitterverse feels about Mitt, and that’s not favorable. By contrast, a lot of Mitt’s supporters aren’t exactly expert users of social media.
Stay tuned.