What a Sketch!

Hours after long-time Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom told CNN that the general election was like an Etch-A-Sketch toy that Romney can shake up and start all over again, Romney promised that he would not change his positions if he wins the Republican presidential nomination.

That analogy pretty much sums of the Conservative definition of a RINO.  For that matter, the Etch-A-Sketch analogy pretty much sums up the Government’s attitude towards the 1^st Amendment and freedom of speech and religion.  Romney is very much like George Bush when he was running for president.  We knew he was a moderate.  He said so.  “I’m a uniter not a divider,” was his mantra.  After 8 years of Bill Clinton, pretty much anyone to the right of Clinton looked like a Conservative.

That political consultants have that opinion of American voters is a sad commentary on the state of mind of Americans:  that the Government and the Media can scribble on our minds, then shake us up and erase everything we knew to be right, leaving no shred of memory behind.

Having played with the Etch-A-Sketch toy as a child, political pundits and consultants should know that the toy does leave traces of its former markings behind.  Maybe not for long, and the lines are feint, but still visible.  Rote memorization strengthens the white matter in our brains.  Since the organization of the Tea Parties, we’re not so apt to forget as we once were.  We read more.  We think more.  We talk more among ourselves.  We don’t just take anyone’s word for anything anymore.

Fehrnstrom can erase Romney’s past and sketch over it a fine recent speech.  He can’t erase Romney’s political record, though.  His health care plan was nothing like Obamacare, it seems.  Traces of other concerns remain, though; such as his stance on illegal immigration.

One thing Fehrnstrom cannot simply erase by shaking our television sets was his own blunder about the election being like an Etch-A-Sketch toy.  He revealed his own opinion about his candidate’s political tendencies, obviously trying to appeal to those “independent thinkers” who always watch CNN and never watch Fox News.

Thanks to Fehrnstrom, “etch-a-sketch” is likely to become the newest synonym for “spin.”