Mitt Romney has been branded an "Etch A Sketch" candidate by his rivals after an aide said the Republican front-runner's policies could be reset after he wins nomination, just like the 1960s toy.
Mitt Romney has been branded an "Etch A Sketch" candidate by his rivals after an aide said the Republican front-runner's policies could be reset after he wins nomination, just like the 1960s toy.
The gaffe sparked a frenzied reaction from Romney's rivals, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, who immediately pounced on the comment as proof that Romney is a moderate at heart.
Eric Fehrnstrom, a Romney spokesman, was asked whether his candidate's conservative rhetoric in the primary campaign would damage his appeal in the general election. He replied that the primary was like an "Etch A Sketch", a popular 1960s mechanical drawing toy that allows children to erase their work.
"You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again," he explained. Both of his main opponents appeared at campaign events gleefully holding models of the plastic toy, which Gingrich described as the "perfect illustration of why people distrust Romney".
While admitting he was likely to lose the delegate race, Gingrich said it was not too late to prevent the front-runner from reaching the "magic number" of 1,144 delegates needed to claim victory at the Republican National Convention and face President Barack Obama in November.
"Santorum is not going to get to a majority, I'm probably going to come in third in terms of total delegates. But the question is, until Romney actually has an absolute majority, I don't think anybody is inclined to give him the nomination," he said.
Speaking at a rally in Mandeville, Louisiana, Santorum said: "We're not looking for someone who's the Etch A Sketch candidate. We're looking for someone who writes what they believe in stone and stands true to what they say."
Romney needs to win slightly less than half of the roughly 1,200 delegates still at stake to clinch the nomination: a rate of success that political analysts suggest is well within his grasp. Should he fall short, the nomination would be decided in a "floor fight" between party grandees at the August convention.
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