I have to ask: have we just seen the first etch-a- sketch moment of the Romney campaign?

Last edited Fri Aug 10, 2012, 12:19 PM - Edit history (1)

I have a burning question, the one asked in the thread title, so let me be clear I am not making an assertion here, but examining the literal question. In that regard, I ask you to do the same. Tell me what you think the answer is.

Is a ploy such as the one I am going to discuss truly a possibility, a probability or beyond the bounds of political reality?

Perhaps Andrea Saul's comment that if people losing their jobs had lived in Massachusetts under Governor Romney's health care plan, they would not have lost their health insurance when they lost their job was not a gaffe but a deliberate move to disguise Romney's subtle switch to the opposite side of this issue from that taken during his primary campaign. It would be the perfect way to do an about-face switcheroo on this issue. Don't say it yourself but have your press secretary say it and let the conservatives' outrage fall upon the press secretary, not the candidate.

Romney knows he cannot continue to run away from the fact he established a health care program in Massachusetts upon which the ACA is heavily modeled. The Obama team will continue to hit him on this the rest of the campaign. How to ameliorate these attacks is his problem. And the answer just might be while Romney can't take public credit for this at this moment in time, he can have his staff slip in comments to both rebuff the Democrats' attacks for his being hypocritical on this issue and he can slowly move to compromise his position put forth during his primary challenge, ultimately embracing certain parts while striking others.

Why would he do that?

He would do that because some of his most important corporate supporters do not actually want the law repealed. That would be the health insurance carriers and the pharmaceutical industry. Romney always plays to his sponsors, always. Give them what they want.

What do they want? They want the law to stay intact because it greatly builds their customer base through that individual mandate. They want the consumer protections stripped from the bill. Particularly, that ban on refusing insurance to people with pre-existing conditions must be stricken. In other words, don't repeal it but "fix it" tweaking parts the industries like and striking parts deleterious to their bottom lines.

Of course, if Romney himself did a sudden about-face on this issue, it would raise an incredible hue and cry from the individual conservatives such as that we have already witnessed -- Coulter, Limbaugh, etc. How to do this in a subtle way that does not make him look like a flip-flopper was his dilemma. Send out a trojan horse was his answer. Andrea Saul, Romney's press secretary, was the trojan horse.

And here's a further clue: she was not the first campaign aide to make this statement in public. Sounds like the start of a trend to me.

So are we witnessing the subtle maneuvers of a Mitt Romney implementing his etch-a-sketch political finesse and presenting it simply as a gaffe on the part of his staff when it was actually a very deliberate but subtle position change?

I would not put a maneuver like that past him. He can't continue to run away from his plan for the next three months, but he has to embrace the positions of his sponsors, and he does have that history of flip-flopping. Reduced to its lowest common denominator, it does appear this might possibly be a slick way of changing sides on an issue without getting any of the conservative outrage heaped on him.

What do you think?

Sam