LAKE CHARLES, La. – Newt Gingrich wielded a new prop Wednesday to shake at Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney: An Etch A Sketch.
Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom on Wednesday morning, in an appearance on CNN, was asked about the perils of a general election campaign if Romney moved too far to the right during the primary.
Ferhnstrom responded: “Well, I think 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 restart all of over again.”
Romney foes from the left and right pounced on the child’s toy – in which a drawing disappears when you shake it, to create a new canvas – as an apt metaphor for a candidate whose positions have shifted on myriad issues over the years. The implication, these foes said, was that Romney would once again change his primary positions to suit a general election fight with President Barack Obama.
Gingrich, campaigning in Louisiana ahead of Saturday’s primary, gleefully adopted the metaphor. Appearing at a restaurant in Lake Charles, Gingrich wielded the small red toy when he said the idea “that if we’re dumb enough to nominate [Romney] that by his acceptance speech he’ll move back to the left triggers everything people worry about.”
Gingrich went through a litany of Romney flip-flops on health care, gun control and other issues.
“I think having an Etch A Sketch as your campaign model erases every doubt about where we’re going,” Gingrich said.
He handed the toy off to a child in the crowd and quipped: “Now you can be a presidential candidate.”
Gingrich later added: “The reason I don’t use an Etch a Sketch, which is why I don’t use a teleprompter because I believe you should talk from the heart, you should know what you believe and you ought to live it out.”
The rapid distribution and response to Ferhnstrom's remark was emblematic of the new-media nature of the presidential campaign, in which political dynamics change by the hour. "Etch A Sketch" was a popular trending topic on Twitter on Wednesday afternoon.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum also pulled out an Etch A Sketch on stage in Louisiana on Wednesday afternoon, according to news reports.
Former Democratic operative Matt Ortega – who has targeted Romney online before – launched http://www.etchasketchmittromney.com/ to highlight the former Massachusetts governor's contradictory quotes.
The kerfuffle threatened to stymie momentum for Romney, who won the Illinois primary by a wide margin Tuesday and picked up the endorsement Wednesday of former Florida Gov. and Republican political royal Jeb Bush.
"This will just resonate," Gingrich told reporters after the event. "It fits into the story that already exists. It's not like it's something new."
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