Etch A Sketch — The children's toy became a factor Wednesday in the Republican presidential race in Md.
THE SHIFTING SANDS OF A CHILDREN’S TOY
THREATEN CANDIDACY OF A FRONTRUNNER
Ex-governor will survive, but at what cost?
INSTEAD OF SAVORING AN ENDORSEMENT,
HE IS FORCED TO DO DAMAGE CONTROL
By Alan Z. Forman
What politician wouldn’t love to have an Etch A Sketch to reinvent a political persona, erase a gaffe on the campaign trail, or start anew after putting a bullet in his foot or a foot in his mouth?
Or to rub out an aide who’s done it for him? The shifting sands of the Etch A Sketch can do it all.
On a day when the GOP’s frontrunner Mitt Romney scored what may yet prove to be the most important endorsement of the presidential race to date — from the son and brother of two ex-presidents — he needed an Etch A Sketch to erase a major misstep caused by the very Etch A Sketch itself.
Instead of being able to savor the coveted endorsement of Jeb Bush, former Governor of Florida, son of George H.W. and brother of Dubya, ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney instead had to do damage control because of a gaffe committed by longtime senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom, who responded to a CNN interviewer’s question about shifting focus from Republican challengers to President Barack Obama, by saying:
“It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”
OPENED WIDE THE DOOR
The comment opened wide the door for chief rival Rick Santorum, the ex-Pennsylvania U.S. senator resisting being pushed to the sidelines à la former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, to observe, “You take whatever he said and you can shake it up and it will be gone; and he’s going to draw a whole new picture for the general election.”
The Etch A Sketch is a drawing tablet that enables children to erase images by simply shaking the toy and then drawing on a clean slate.
On Wednesday, as Romney came to Maryland to campaign for the Free State’s 37 delegates to the Republican National Convention in Tampa-St. Petersburg in August, Santorum’s spokeswoman Alice Stewart appeared at a rally in Arbutus handing out Etch A Sketches to reporters covering the town hall-style meeting.
ENDORSEMENT ALL BUT FORGOTTEN
The Bush endorsement was all but forgotten less than 10 hours after it was given. After achieving a major victory, the Romney campaign again did what it seems to do best, squander opportunity.
Brushing aside pressure from many in the GOP to step into the race, to be the unifying candidate they think Romney cannot be, the younger Bush all but took himself out of the running, urging Republican voters to support the former Massachusetts governor.
His endorsement had the potential to be the death knell for the Santorum and Gingrich candidacies, to put Romney over the top — but it was not to be.
So the rally in Arbutus, at the Dewey Loman American Legion Hall where former Gov. Bob Ehrlich — who is Romney’s campaign chairman in Maryland — announced his own failed candidacy for governor two years ago, not far from where he grew up, became simply another campaign stop along the way toward an uncertain party convention just five months down the road.
ABOUT TO HAVE A MAJOR IMPACT
Although Maryland is a reliably blue state for most presidential elections these days, pundits this week are touting it as being about to have a major impact on the Republican nomination, in a race that most had expected would be decided by now.
There’s little chance the state won’t go for Obama in the fall, even more so because of the anticipated referendum on same-sex marriage that is expected to be on the Maryland ballot.
A large African-American electorate is expected to turn out for that referendum, to cast their votes against the state’s new law. But while at the polls, the likelihood is that most will vote for Obama, thereby increasing the President’s already overwhelming advantage in the Free State.
The Maryland primary will take place April 3.
Editor’s note: Invented in the late 1950s, Etch A Sketch is a registered trademark for a mechanical drawing toy manufactured by the Ohio Art Company. It uses aluminum powder controlled by two large knobs, one of which moves the powder vertically and the other horizontally. Turning both knobs simultaneously creates diagonal lines, whereas turning the toy upside down and shaking it erases the picture and provides a clean slate. Etch A Sketch was manufactured in Ohio from 1960-2001, when its manufacturing plant was moved to Shenzhen, China.
alforman@voiceofbaltimore.org
