Step Away From That Toy Analogy!

As you know, we’re all about speaking memorably. But we make an exception when you’re saying something stupid. 

Mitt Romney advisor Eric Fehrnstrom spoke way too memorably when CNN asked if Romney’s rightward tilt will hurt him in the general election. 

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.

analogy (an-AL-oh-gee), the template. From the Greek, meaning “proportional thought.” (More analogizing on our sister site.)

We love an analogy for its ability to attach thoughts to physical objects. The physicality makes an abstraction seem literal. A candidate’s move to the center becomes a fun toy. The problem here is that Romney’s planned and completely unsurprising future move to the center is the last thing the campaign wants to talk about right now. First, it has to win over a whole buncha ultraconservative primary voters.

And now Rick Santorum’s people are gleefully handing out little Etch-a-Sketches.  “Great toy,” Newt Gingrich tweeted. “Losing strategy.” And Mr. Gingrich knows from losing strategies.

If a shaken Mr. Fehrnstrom needs a job, he should send his resume to the Ohio Art Company, the Etch-a-Sketch makers. Surely they’d give him a clean slate.

Comments

[Gnftr05]

Or, maybe, he could clean slates. Erasing things seems to be right up his political alley.