I’m soooo looking forward to seeing this clip used in commercials.
CNN interviewer: “Is there a concern that 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?”
Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney’s communications director: “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 over again.”
Yep, Gov. Romney’s word is his bond. But it’s a very short-term bond, maturing in about 45 minutes. We already knew that, but it sure doesn’t hurt when one of his own top guys says it.
In the words of Groucho, “These are my principles. And if you don’t like them, I have others.” And others, and others, and even more others, in the case of Mitt Romney.
Barring massive calamity, the Presidential race is over. The Obama team is too good to fail to take advantage of a gimme like this.
But he didn’t say that. He said the campaign gets a reset. It is clear that he meant voters that have formed an opinion on a primary candidate will re-assess on the general election candidates.
In addition, I don’t think this clip would make a particularly good attack ad since it is not Romney saying it. Santorum might use it a bit now, but who will care in October.
I agree that it is vague enough to spin. He should have chosen his words more carefully. But I think my interpretation is the most likely given that it was said by a communications director on CNN. If it was said in a smokey backroom over cigars and cognac then maybe…
I believe they will. The base hates Obama so much that they would crawl in the nude on broken glass to vote against him. They would just as eagerly vote for Romney as they would Reagan if only because it means denying Obama a vote.
Meh. It is the most likely interpretation, I agree. However, campaign spokespeople seem to have been doing a pretty awful job when on TV lately; witness the Santorum campaign and “[it’s okay for him to make things up,] because it’s what’s in his heart.”
Like I said in the other thread, it’s true, but it’s a terrible choice of phrasing because it cuts right to the problems a lot of the base has had with Romney since the beginning: he’s not very conservative and they’re unsure about his sincerity. That’s why they’ve been voting for losers and has-beens instead of rallying to his side. So here’s his campaign director making a comment that suggests they are right to be concerned about thos things. It’s not going to cost him the nomination, but it’s a gift for Santorum.
It’s fair to assume he was responding to the question, and it was pretty clear what the question was about.
But what’s the alternative interpretation? That the voters are dumb marks with short memories, and in the general election, they’ll have forgotten all about the extreme things he said during the primaries?
I don’t think Team Obama has to spell out what Romney’s spokesperson is saying here. All they have to do is make sure the clip gets played a lot, and let the voters interpret it for themselves.
Who gives a flip about Santorum? He’s not going to be the nominee.
One way to win a campaign is to define the other candidate before he gets a chance to define himself. Team Obama has been working on this. It should be easy to see how this helps them a lot.
On this front, for now he’d be wise to let Santorum attack Romney for him. Both Santo and Newt are already hitting Romney over this. Romney’s going to win, but the primaries are not going to end for a while, and this is just giftwrapped for his opponents.
Since I’ve been saying exactly the same thing, I don’t see what’s wrong with what he said.
You all keep making the mistake of thinking that the same group of people will be involved watching the campaign after the conventions as were watching the primaries. That’s never been true. A huge new group enters, a group that has paid next to no attention to what happened earlier. They haven’t heard the attacks, haven’t bothered with the controversies, and haven’t formed any opinions.
That’s the reset button. He’s saying that it all starts over again because it all starts over again.
I spelled out the interpretation: “It is clear that he meant voters that have formed an opinion on a primary candidate will re-assess on the general election candidates.” We certainly saw this to be true with the Democrat’s 2004 primary.
Honestly, to suggest that a PR person admitted on CNN that Romney will flip-flop back to a centrist viewpoint during the general election seems naive.
This is kind of fun. Both Newt and Santo brought Etch-A-Sketches to their rallies this afternoon, and the name of the product is now trending on Twitter. Newt handed his Etch-A-Sketch to a child and said something like “You can now be a presidential candidate.”
I don’t think it’s a death blow or anything like that but it’s definitely a damaging gaffe. There are two lines of attack the Obama campaign is going to use on Mitt Romney: he is a plutocrat who is out of touch with ordinary people and he is an opportunist who will say anything to get elected.
Unfortunately for Romney both these attacks have been reinforced well before the general election campaign partly as a result of gaffes like this. They have been used by his GOP opponents which gives them a certain bi-partisan credibility. And Romney has been remarkably inept at defendings against these attacks unlike Obama with the Wright issue in 2008.
It’s better to define your opponent’s negatives before the main campaign starts. Not least because it allows Obama to remain mostly above the fray while his surrogates merely have to keep poking at festering wounds.
I wonder how true this is holding in the age of Facebook and YouTube, though. It doesn’t take long for “Hey, look at all these things Romney said just a few months ago!” to spread through the tubes.
We have this thing called video now. All those “severe conservative” things taht Romney said to get the nomination are going to follow him into the general election. For a couple of weeks Romney was in danger of a brokered convention and he got hallelujah heehaw for a while there and we have the video to prove it.
In the context of the question it certainly sounds like they are saying that they can jerk to the middle because people won’t really care what Romney had to say during the primaries.
I think the point that Fehrnstrom was making was that the primary campaign is like the regular season and the general election campaign is like the playoffs. It doesn’t matter what your record was in the regular season once you make the playoffs because you start over again and only the games you win in the playoffs count. And in that sense, he’s right - the election won’t be about Romney vs Santorum or Romney vs Gingrich. What will matter is Romney vs Obama.
That said, it was still a dumb thing to say. It wouldn’t have mattered if one of Santorum’s people had said it because Santorum doesn’t have a reputation for flip-flopping. But Romney does. He and his people have to avoid saying anything that reminds the voters of the f-word.