Ann Romney, front left, wife of Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, right, addresses an audience during a victory rally in Schaumburg, Ill., March 20. (Steven Senne/AP)

Ann Romney and Hilary Rosen flap: Must Team Obama always be first responder?

By Linda Feldmann, Staff writer / 04.13.12

The Ann Romney flap may have unintentional consequences for Team Obama.

When Democratic activist Hilary Rosen dissed Ann Romney Wednesday, saying she has “never worked a day in her life,” the president, first lady, and countless other Democrats swooped in and condemned the slam on the wife of presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney. Ms. Rosen apologized for her “poorly chosen” words.

So what happens the next time someone in the vast universe of Democratic strategists and cable TV pundits makes an untoward remark about a critical issue or voter group? Will President Obama or his surrogates have to step in? And if they don’t, will Mr. Obama be blamed for tacitly condoning the comment?

Liberal editorialist Jonathan Capehart set up that test Thursday. In a Washington Post blog entry called “Selective outrage: Hilary Rosen vs. Allen West,” Mr. Capehart raised the Florida Republican congressman’s statement Tuesday that he believes there are “about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party that are members of the Communist Party.” It’s called the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Congressman West said.

Certainly, a preposterous assertion, as Capehart notes. Maybe so preposterous that it doesn’t deserve a reply. But then Capehart scolds GOP leaders for not condemning the McCarthy-esque allegation.

As a practical matter, Obama and Company can’t strike down every off-key remark by an ally uttered in front of the ever-proliferating cameras. They would start to look like kids at an arcade playing Whac-A-Mole.

But clearly, the Rosen comment hit a nerve right as Mr. Romney had effectively locked in the Republican presidential nomination, and attention had turned to the general election. Obama is winning big among women, and needs to keep that advantage to win in November. With one off-hand comment –suggesting that Mrs. Romney can’t understand women’s struggles because she hasn’t worked outside the home – Rosen handed a gift to Mr. Romney right when he needed it.

The Romney campaign has followed with a fundraising e-mail titled “War on Moms.” It says: "If you're a stay-at-home mom, the Democrats have a message for you: You've never worked a day in your life."

According to the latest census data, about 1 in 4 women with children under 15 is not working outside the home. That is a significant voting bloc – and most aren’t wealthy like Ann Romney. Mrs. Romney herself noted on Thursday that she has had struggles of her own, particularly with her health.

In addition, Mrs. Romney has carved out an image as an appealing surrogate for her husband, complete with stories about how exhausting it was to raise five boys. Polls show her favorability rating far exceeds her negatives.

So for Obama, the Rosen comment created a PR emergency on multiple levels: She had disrespected a big voting bloc and had gone after a candidate’s wife. Team Obama pushed the panic button.

“I don’t have a lot of patience for commentary about the spouses of political candidates,” the president said.

First lady Michelle Obama chimed in on Twitter: "Every mother works hard, and every woman deserves to be respected,” she wrote.

Rosen’s gaffe was arguably as big as Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom’s Etch-a-Sketch comment – though Rosen doesn’t work for Obama. Still, she has sparked a “mommy wars” discussion that continued to rage Friday. The next time a Democratic pundit blunders on camera – and it will surely happen –everyone will be watching to see whether it merits a presidential response. And yes or no, that will tell us something about Obama’s priorities.

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Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul of Texas speaks at California State University at Chico last week. (Frank Rebelo/CSU-Chico/AP)

Ron Paul: Rick Santorum exit could provide opening

By Amanda Paulson, Staff writer / 04.10.12

Ron Paul doesn't pull any punches in his latest ad, which began airing in Texas on Tuesday.

"Let's get this straight. We're debating between a big-spending, debt-ceiling-raising fiscal liberal, a moon-colony guy, a moderate from Massachusetts, or a Texan with a real plan to balance the budget," begins an announcer, speaking with a rapid Texas twang.

Images of his opponents accompany the slams against them, including Newt Gingrich wearing a space suit.

"Ron Paul isn't playing games," the voice-over continues – against a backdrop of an Etch-A-Sketch, a reference to the recent gaffe by the Romney campaign – before labeling Congressman Paul, at the end, a "big, bold Texan."

The message is plain: Paul isn't going anywhere, and with his home state of Texas – and its 152 delegates – up for grabs on May 29, he can still have an impact on the race. That might be even more true as of Tuesday, when Rick Santorum announced that he was suspending his campaign, saying the "race is over for me."

But with Mr. Santorum's exit virtually sealing the nomination for Mitt Romney, the question arises: How successful has he been in his second go-round as a presidential candidate?

In some cases, he underperformed expectations.

He didn't win a single state, despite expectations that he might take Alaska or North Dakota. He performed better in caucus states, but not as well as some experts had predicted. 

Of the three remaining candidates, he has the fewest number of delegates: 51 in the latest Associated Press count, compared with 661 for Mr. Romney.

But by the most important measure – the number of votes he received – Paul was a much bigger player this year than in 2008.

In a "living autopsy" of Paul's campaign, The New York Times's Micah Cohen compared the votes and delegates Paul won by Super Tuesday in 2008 (when 27 states had voted) with the votes he's received so far this year in the 32 states that have held contests. Paul's share of the votes was 4 percent in 2008, compared with 10 percent in 2012. He's also received nearly twice the number of total votes.

In accounting for the change, Mr. Cohen writes that, "It is possible that Mr. Paul has simply run a better campaign. But the more likely explanation is that the mood of the country is more aligned to Paul’s views than it was in 2008." Factors include the rise of the tea party and changing opinions on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (which Paul opposes).

None of that gets Paul any closer to the White House. But he may still have some sway in the Republican Party and the fall election – arguably more than Mr. Gingrich or even Santorum. 

For one thing, Paul's followers are famously loyal – to their candidate, far more than to the Republican Party. If Paul were to launch a third-party campaign (a possibility about which many have speculated) he could effectively torpedo Romney's chances.

"Paul is in a much stronger bargaining position than Gingrich to extract promises from Romney because he can do far more damage if he isn’t placated. That’s why – though both men have zero chance of being their party’s standard-bearer – Paul matters more than Gingrich," argues the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza.

Almost certainly, Paul's campaign will keep going to the end in order to keep his platform in the GOP conversation. In fact, he just announced an "in it to win it" moneybomb, hoping to raise $2 million on April 15. 

Paul's ideas – particularly on the dangers of debt – have already crept into GOP rhetoric. No one knows at this point exactly what Paul may want from Romney, but expect him to continue to be a major voice.

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Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks in Milwaukee last Tuesday. (Steven Senne/AP)

How should Mitt Romney shift his campaign now?

By Amanda Paulson, Staff Writer / 04.09.12

Even some of the most anti-Romney Republicans seem to be accepting that Mitt Romney will be their party's nominee.

In the latest Associated Press poll of the GOP's unpledged superdelegates (who can support any candidate they choose at the August convention), Mr. Romney picked up 11 new endorsements over the previous month's poll.

(Of the 114 superdelegates polled, 35 say they support Romney, compared with four for Newt Gingrich, two for Rick Santorum, and one for Ron Paul. The rest are still publicly neutral.)

And Mr. Gingrich, who has scaled back his campaign, admitted on Fox News Sunday that Romney was likely to be the nominee and said that he'll support him at the convention, assuming he gets the 1,144 delegates he needs to sew up the nomination. He also said that Romney has “done a very good job of building a very substantial machine” that could defeat President Obama.

But beating Mr. Obama appears to be a daunting challenge. Polls don't show Romney doing well against the president, and Romney doesn't generate great enthusiasm among many of the Republican faithful.

Pundits and conservatives are full of advice for Romney, though it seems to vary a lot.

Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin, author of the influential Right Turn blog, suggests he beef up his policy, focusing on health care (she suggests he develop an alternative to Obamacare), energy policy, and entitlement reforms, and let Obama be the more negative candidate. She also advises Romney to resist the temptation to "pander to women," despite the fact that polls show women in key swing states preferring Obama by wide margins.

Chris Cillizza, meanwhile – also at the Post, but without a partisan bent – agrees that Romney needs to work on his health-care response (mostly so that Obama can't invalidate his criticism of the national law by claiming his Massachusetts law was the blueprint). Otherwise he writes that Romney mostly needs to start appealing to a broader audience: sit down with national media outlets, increase his wife's visibility, find ways to talk about Mormonism effectively, and find ways to break with hard-line conservatives and increase his appeal to independents.

What tack will Romney take? Technically, he's got a long way to go before he gets the delegates needed. At this point, according to the AP count, Romney has 660, compared with 281 for Santorum, 135 for Gingrich, and 51 for Paul. If he continues at this pace (he has 58 percent of the delegates so far), he'll clinch the nomination by June 5.

But he's already starting to act like the nominee.

He took a short break from campaigning over the weekend, and also decided to pull all of his negative ads in Pennsylvania while Santorum is temporarily off the campaign trail due to his daughter's hospitalization – an easier step to take now that Santorum doesn't feel like much of a threat.

In a Monday interview on Mike Huckabee's radio show, Romney said that "It’s kind hard for anybody to get the delegates to pass me at this stage, so it looks pretty good." He also said that he welcomed Gingrich's comments and wasn't surprised by them. He said that he and Gingrich speak fairly regularly and said that Gingrich is "pretty open-eyed about this." 

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In this image, Elizabeth Banks portrays Effie Trinket (l.) and Jennifer Lawrence portrays Katniss Everdeen in a scene from 'The Hunger Games.' (Murray Close/Lionsgate/AP)

The Hunger Games: Should Ron Paul be a Hunger Games super fan?

By David Grant, Staff writer / 04.03.12

If you don't know The Hunger Games, let's get you up to speed on the first part of a triptych whose first installation recently blew away every non-sequel film release in American history during its opening weekend in theaters: A reluctant, female Spartacus crashes the futuristic blood sport (think: Roman Colosseum with streaming HD video ... and hovercrafts) of a dystopian society hunkered down on the ashes of a once-prosperous North America.

To say more of this gladiator, the 16-year-old Katniss, and her quest would be to ruin the truly absorbing – if somewhat lightweight – story created by the trilogy's publicly reticent author, Suzanne Collins.

But while many have wondered about Hunger Games relationship to adolescents, war and whether adults should even bother reading the things at all, your author -- who gulped down the audiobook during a long car ride over the weekend -- was struck by another component of its prose: a strong libertarian streak.

Collins told The New York Times in a rare interview "I don’t write about adolescence. I write about war. For adolescents.”

For certain, the Hunger Games trilogy has violence as its main consideration. But whether it's on war or myriad other topics, we don't think Great Libertarian Poobah Ron Paul would quibble with many of the sentiments sprinkled in Collins's writing.

Let's run through four of them.

1. "As long as you can find yourself, you'll never starve," Katniss recalls her father telling her. In this case, the play is on her name, a sort of bluish tuber that she claws up from a riverbank. The book begins on this note of ultimate self-reliance, that only the individual can keep life alive.

To avoid starvation with help from the government, one must enter a devil's pact. While all citizens are entered into the Reaping, a lottery to decide which boy and girl will be sent into the hellish Hunger Games, citizens can opt to enter their name more than once for a year's supply of vital – but meager – foodstuffs. And the entries are cumulative each year from age 12 to age 18.

If you can provide for yourself, the Hunger Games tells us, you can make it through. If it's government help you want, the price may be your very life.

2. “District 12: Where you can starve to death in safety,” Katniss laments near the book's outset. It's forbidden for the people of Katniss's district to venture out into the woods to hunt, fish, or gather plants. Here one could hear echoes of the cries of libertarians, crying out against a government that by securing total security has all but destroyed liberty.

In other words, one must rely on themselves to survive, even in the face of a government that restricts almost all avenues to prosperity.

3. Government bureaucrats, a favorite libertarian target, get a very harsh reading. Not only are Panem's paper pushers aesthetically and culturally bankrupt, the book makes clear, they consider themselves far superior to people from the nation's 12 districts.   

 "What do they do all day, these people in the Capitol," Katniss muses, remembering some of her attendants who have dyed their skin pea-green or who carry "orange corkscrew" curls, "besides decorating their bodies and waiting around for a new shipment of tributes to die for their entertainment?"

4. Lazy, capricious and warmongering. And it's the last third of those that is most accentuated in the Hunger Games. In the modern libertarian movement, the answer to war is to stop "policing the world."

Libertarian's hold that a force capable of defending the United States should be the mission of American military spending. Simply put, the goal isn't to find ways to insert oneself into conflict but to protect oneself and fight if attacked. Petaa, Katniss's fellow gladiator from District 12, gives a succinct statement that weds a libertarian instinct about violence to his desire to subvert the entire violent system.

"No, when the time comes, I'm sure I'll kill just like everybody else," he says. "I can't go down without a fight. Only I keep wishing I could think of a way to... to show the Capitol they don't own me. That I'm more than just a piece in their Games."

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In this still image taken from video, US Representative Bobby Rush, a prominent civil rights activist during the 1960s, pulls on the hood of a gray sweatshirt, known as a hoodie during a floor speech in the House of Representatives in Washington March 28. (Reuters)

Why couldn't Rep. Bobby Rush wear hoodie on House floor?

By Peter Grier, Staff writer / 03.28.12

Hoodies on the House floor are verboten, apparently. Rep. Bobby Rush (D) of Illinois was scolded and escorted from the chamber of the House of Representatives on Wednesday morning, when he attempted to give a speech on the need for a full investigation of the Trayvon Martin shooting while wearing sunglasses and a gray hooded sweat shirt.

“Racial profiling has to stop, Mr. Speaker,” said Representative Rush while doffing his suit jacket to reveal his hoodie garb. “Just because someone wears a hoodie does not make them a hoodlum.”

Rush continued to speak while the presiding officer, Rep. Gregg Harper (R) of Mississippi, banged the gavel, ordering him to desist. Eventually someone from the office of the House sergeant-at-arms appeared and escorted Rush, hoodie and all, off the floor.

The reason for the uproar is that Congress has a dress code. Men are expected to wear coats and ties, and women to wear correspondingly serious clothing. Under House Rule XVII, Section 5, hats are prohibited, and a hoodie is unquestionably a head covering.

“The Sergeant-at-Arms is charged with the strict enforcement of this clause,” concludes that section.

Senior Democrats played down the kerfuffle. Minority leader Nancy Pelosi noted that when she first came to Congress, women were prohibited from wearing pants on the floor. But really, why should the House be such a stickler on items of dress? In the 1830s and 1840s – admittedly, a much more heated era in US history – many lawmakers carried weapons, and violence was not uncommon. In some Asian legislatures today, debates can end in fistfights.

The reason for the rules on decorum may be that civility stands on a slippery slope.

“As [humorist] Will Rogers observed, members call themselves gentlemen and gentlewomen, because the alternatives would be to call one another polecats and coyotes, or worse, liars, hypocrites, stupid, dumb, demagogues, socialists, communists, none of which lend themselves to the deliberative process so important to the governance of the nation,” wrote Ray Smock, director of the Robert C. Byrd Center for Legislative Studies at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, W.Va., last October.

Mr. Smock, who served as historian of the House from 1983 to 1995, believes that civility now “is at one of the lowest ebbs in congressional history.”

Such breaches of decorum as the “You lie!” shout of Rep. Joe Wilson (R) of South Carolina during President Obama’s 2009 speech to Congress on health-care reforms may be indicative of a larger, paralyzing incivility based on bitter partisanship, in Smock’s view.

Narrower measures indicate that Congress may be becoming more civil, not less. An Annenberg Public Policy Center study of the number of times lawmakers are reprimanded for out-of-bounds language by having their words “taken down” found that infractions have become relatively few and farther between.

“Overall, civility, not incivility, is the norm in the House,” said the September 2011 report.

All that said, Rush had particular incentive to speak out on the Trayvon Martin issue. A former member of the 1960s Black Panthers, Rush was active in the civil rights movement of the era. His own 29-year-old son died of a gunshot.

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Republican presidential candidate, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum speaks in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday, as the court began three days of arguments on the health-care law signed by President Obama. (Charles Dharapak/AP)

Rick Santorum puts 'Romneycare' on trial on steps of Supreme Court (+video)

By Amanda Paulson, Staff Writer / 03.26.12

It's a relatively quiet week in the GOP presidential nominating calendar.

No primaries between Louisiana this past Saturday (which Rick Santorum won handily, as expected) and Wisconsin, Maryland, and the District of Columbia next week.

All of which means the political news is focused, instead, on the Supreme Court arguments being heard this week on "Obamacare" – which Mr. Santorum sees as the perfect opportunity to press his case.

Santorum took his campaign to the steps of the Supreme Court Monday, and has been using every opportunity he can to hammer home his main point: That Mitt Romney's health-care law in Massachusetts was the "blueprint" upon which Obamacare is based, and that as a result, Romney can't credibly criticize what is, for many Republicans, the most hated achievement of the Obama administration.

"There's one candidate who's uniquely disqualified to make the case. That's the reason I'm here and he's not," Santorum told reporters outside the Supreme Court Monday afternoon. 

Romney has said he will fight to repeal Obama's law, and has argued that the Massachusetts law was different in many respects – particularly since it was what the voters there wanted.

Criticizing "Romneycare" has been a favorite tactic of Santorum's (and other GOP candidates) for months; the Supreme Court case just helps by moving it front and center in the news.

"Why would the Republican Party nominate someone who agrees with that [individual] mandate, on the most important issue of the election? That's why it's become so important because it's the establishment types who don't mind Obamacare," Santorum said on CNN Sunday.

It's certainly unlikely that the issue is going to do much to boost Santorum, who is badly trailing Romney in the delegate account and faces far less friendlier states in April primaries. The only question at this point for Santorum seems to be how much longer he'll stay in the race.

But how much does this it hurt Romney?

Obama's staff have been underlining Romney's Massachusetts health plan too, with David Plouffe, a senior adviser, calling him the "godfather" of the administration's health-care plan.

But not everyone agrees that Romney's health-care history will hurt him.

"To the extent that attacks on President Barack Obama’s health-care reform are good politics, the candidate best able to make them is Mitt Romney," argue Paul Goldman and Mark Rozell in a Politico column. (Mr. Goldman is a former chairman of Virginia’s Democratic Party, and Mark Rozell is a professor of public policy at George Mason University.)

They point out that aspects of ObamaCare are popular, and say that Romney has an edge in criticizing it since he can't be portrayed as totally lacking in compassion the way some other Republicans might be – analagous to Nixon going to China.

Romney "would be the first GOP nominee in nearly 50 years with a proven track record on health care who has been praised by Democrats –including the president – as fair and compassionate. He can’t be demonized as an out-of-touch, uncompassionate, hard-right ideologue on this issue," they write.

That may be a hard distinction for Romney to make to die-hard conservatives in November – but many of those voters may still see him as a better alternative than Obama.

Meanwhile, as much as Santorum and other conservatives are emphasizing the Supreme Court case now, it's hard to know how much of an issue it will be this fall. If the Supreme Court does in fact rule that part or all of the health-care law is unconstitutional, then it's hardly likely to stay at the top of voters' minds.

For now, though, expect Santorum – but not Romney – to get as much news mileage as he can out of the hearings this week.

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A man hides from the rain under his sign at a Tea Party Patriots rally calling for the repeal of the 2010 healthcare law championed by President Barack Obama, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Saturday. The Supreme Court will hear arguments next week over the fate of Obama's healthcare law. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Obama embraces ‘Obamacare’

By Brad Knickerbocker, Staff writer / 03.24.12

Ever since he launched it two years ago, President Obama’s health care reform program has been slammed by its critics as “Obamacare.”

Republicans hate it. Their presidential hopefuls sneeringly vow to kill it their first day in office – no more so than Mitt Romney, whose health care program when he was governor of Massachusetts became the model for Obama’s. Some states are suing to block the individual mandate – a case the United States Supreme Court takes up Monday.

If there’s an equivalent on the Democratic side – a derisory label tossed about in hopes that it’ll stick – it’s the GOP’s alleged “war on women.”

But nothing has had the effect of rallying conservative troops and annoying the political opposition – in this case the White House and Democratic lawmakers who passed (to use its proper name) the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – than “Obamacare” (or “ObamaCare” if you wish).

But now, in what might be seen as either chutzpah or a wimp-out, Obama and his reelection supporters have fully embraced the term.

On Friday, the Obama campaign emailed supporters: “Today is the two-year anniversary of the Affordable Care Act. Since then, the law that almost everyone calls Obamacare has been doing exactly what the other side has hoped it wouldn’t do: It’s been working. It’s about time we give it the love it deserves.”

From his Twitter account, Obama’s reelection campaign tweeted: “Happy birthday to Obamacare: two years in, the Affordable Care Act is making millions of Americans’ lives better every day.” And just to make it clear, a subsequent tweet read: “If you’re proud of Obamacare and tired of the other side using it as a dirty word, complete this sentence: #ILikeObamacare because…”

At a fundraiser at the Tyler Perry studios in Atlanta last week, Obama also used the term and said he doesn’t mind it because it shows he “does care,” reported Devin Dwyer at ABC News.

“Change is, yes, health care reform,” Obama said to applause. “You want to call it Obamacare – that’s okay, because I do care.”

And why shouldn’t he use the term?

As Greg Sargent of the Washington Post writes, “The simple fact is that this law is Obama’s number one domestic achievement. It is his. It is Obamacare.”

So now that Obama and friends are happy to boost “Obamacare,” does that mean opponents will drop what they always used as a slur? Not hardly.

Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin likens Obama’s health care program to a “mythical Hydra with its unconstitutional agencies.”

“Obamacare is a real Washington monster whose countless hidden bureaucracies keep sprouting forth even after they’re rooted out,” she writes in her latest column.

A web site called “ObamaCare Watch” says, “Instead of attacking the primary problems – lack of portable insurance owned by the policy holder and costs driven upward by excessive federal subsidization – ObamaCare leaves the flawed policies in place and attempts to coerce coverage of the remaining uninsured with a heavy-handed governmental structure.”

On Monday (the day the Supreme Court takes up Obamacare), the conservative group Americans for Prosperity is hosting a “Hands Off My Health Care” rally in Washington “to demonstrate our resolve to end ObamaCare.”

“We MUST ensure that the Supreme Court and all of establishment Washington know that Obama's healthcare takeover is an affront to liberty, to free-market principles and to our Constitution and that WE THE PEOPLE REJECT OBAMACARE, AND WANT IT GONE,” declares an invitation to sign a petition to lawmakers.

So now that Obama is OK with “ObamaCare,” does this mean it’s safe for Romney to embrace “Romneycare,” as his GOP rivals labeled his Massachusetts program? Don’t count on it. 

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Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney addresses an audience during a campaign stop at an American Legion post in Arbutus, Md., Wednesday. (Steven Senne/AP)

Romney Etch A Sketch: Is aide's comment a present for his foes? (+video)

By Peter Grier, Staff writer / 03.22.12

Has Mitt Romney’s campaign inadvertently provided opponents the perfect phrase with which to attack the former Massachusetts governor? That’s the question in the wake of the “Etch A Sketch” comment by senior Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom on CNN.

Asked whether Mr. Romney had moved too far to the right for the general election, Mr. Fehrnstrom said that the GOP hopeful would hit a reset button for the fall campaign. “It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch,” he said. “You can kind of shake it up and restart it all over again.”

For Romney, Sketch-gate has overshadowed what should have been the triumphant aftermath of an Illinois primary victory. Romney’s primary opponents immediately seized upon the image of an erasable toy to project their doubts about the depths of Romney’s conservatism. Both Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich held up Etch A Sketches at rallies on Wednesday.

“Team Romney says if Mitt is GOP nominee, he’ll hit reset button for gen election. Where does that leave conservatives?” tweeted Mr. Santorum on Thursday.

Conservative activists who have long resisted Romney’s likely nomination bemoaned the fact that it is only now, so late in the game, that they have found an analogy that perfectly expresses their doubts about his beliefs.

“We’ve been at a loss to encapsulate our opposition into a one-liner; a bumper sticker,” wrote Daniel Horowitz on the conservative RedState blog on Thursday. “After all, it takes copious pages of ink to explain the extent of Romney’s hypocrisy on the issue of healthcare alone. Yet, late in the 11th hour of the campaign, when it’s probably too late to make a difference, we have finally discovered our symbol that exemplifies Romney.”

If nothing else, perhaps now the Romney team will stop demanding that the right get on board their train and provide some reasons to believe that Romney’s conservative positions won’t get shaken off like a kid's drawing in September, Mr. Horowitz said.

Meanwhile, gleeful Democrats were making much the same point about the power of the Etch A Sketch image.

On the blog of liberal talk-show host Rachel Maddow, contributor Steve Benen wrote that Romney aide Fehrnstrom should simply have said, “Romney is a mainstream conservative, and there’s nothing extreme about his vision for America.”

Instead, he’s hampered Romney with a line that will be tough to live down, according to Mr. Benen.

“It’s the kind of line that reinforces the worst possible fears about Mitt Romney’s entire candidacy – he doesn’t even care what he’s saying to voters right now, because it’ll all be thrown out the window in a few months anyway,” he writes.

Wow. Both left and right agree: The Etch A Sketch thing is deadly. So they must be right, right?

Well, only if the general election were, say, this week. That’s our theory, and we’re sticking with it.

Yes, small things can quickly become big things in today’s political news cycle, which moves at the speed of iPad apps. Make one small slip and the next thing you know, you’ve got a full-blown flap on your hands. Voters are prone to think that small things such as the Etch A Sketch comment provide them a window into the real life of candidates, writes Chris Cillizza in his The Fix blog at The Washington Post.

But what enters the news cycle can exit it just as fast, pushed out by the latest juicy gaffelet. Three words will illustrate our point: Santorum Satan speech. Remember when that was going to sink his candidacy? Oh ... right. He is now pretty far behind, but we’d argue that it wasn’t the speech per se that made him lose Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois after leading polls in all three states.

We’re big believers in the Feiler Faster theory, created some years ago by writer Bruce Feiler. It holds that the increasing pace of the news cycle is matched by the public’s ability to process and inculcate new bits of information. So the whole process is speeded up, including the getting-over-it part.

We agree with the eminent pundit Larry Sabato, political science professor at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

“The ‘Etch-A-Sketch’ incident is going in my next issue of ‘Feeding Frenzy’. Sound & fury signifying very little,” Mr. Sabato tweeted Thursday.

He also complained about the Etch A Sketch getting “dragged thru mud” in the whole affair.

“Big part of my childhood," he wrote on his Twitter account. "Proved to me I had no artistic talent.”

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Republican presidential candidate, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum speaks at Superior Energy in Harvey, La., Wednesday, March 21. (Gerald Herbert/AP)

Rick Santorum has had a good run. Where does he go from here?

By Amanda Paulson, Staff Writer / 03.21.12

The upset Rick Santorum was hoping for in Illinois didn't come; instead, he lost to Mr. Romney by more than 11 points.

At this point, it's hard to envision anyone but Mitt Romney getting the GOP presidential nomination.

Yes, Mr. Santorum has had a better run than anyone would have predicted even a few months ago. He appeals to conservative Republicans, Evangelicals, and those who really, really want an alternative to Romney.

But the math is not in his favor. In order to get the nomination, Santorum would need to win 69 percent of the remaining delegates – something which simply isn't going to happen.

His other hope – which he and his team have become more vocal about in recent days – is doing well enough to deny Romney the 1,144 delegates he needs, thereby delaying the decision until the August convention.

But that possibility is also incredibly slim, and would require a major screw-up by Romney. Currently, Romney only needs to win 46 percent of the remaining delegates to get to the magic number – not a high hurdle. The implosion of Newt Gingrich's campaign (he got just 8 percent of the vote in Illinois) hasn't helped Santorum the way some predicted, and might make it even harder to keep Romney from steadily amassing delegates.

Moreover, it's not something most Republicans want.

"Whatever slim chances that Mr. Santorum has would depend on going to the floor in Tampa," wrote New York Times polling expert Nate Silver on Wednesday, calling the nomination contest now "a one-man race." "As this becomes increasingly clear to voters, they may come to see their choice as being less one between Mr. Romney and Mr. Santorum and more one between Mr. Romney and a brokered convention. Some of Mr. Santorum’s supporters may desert him once they view the race in those terms, making Mr. Romney’s path easier still."

Add to that Santorum's fundraising deficits: In the past month, his campaign reported raising $9 million to Romney's $12 million, and the Santorum campaign has $2.6 million in the bank compared with Romney's $7.3 million.

And yet, Santorum doesn't sound like he's planning to fold anytime soon.

Speaking to reporters after his thumping in Illinois Tuesday, Santorum refused to even acknowledge that he lost badly.

"It wasn't a tough night. We did very well," he said. "We picked up a lot of delegates tonight in a very tough state. Nobody had any expectations for us to win, and you know we did what we had to do."

He also put more pressure on Gingrich supporters to move over to him, saying, "it's very clear it’s a two-person race and now we need to get all the conservatives to line up behind us."

But if all of Gingrich's supporters had gone with Santorum in Illinois, the former Pennsylvania senator still would have lost.

Looking ahead, Santorum also doesn't get much help from the calendar.

Louisiana votes Saturday, and Santorum is expected to win there. But after that come a slew of Northern states where Romney is far better positioned. Of the states voting in April, Santorum has hope in Wisconsin, and in his home state of Pennsylvania, but that's about it.

So why stay in the race? Partly, it may have to do with denial – especially after such an unexpected Cinderella surge late in the campaign season. Or a wish to at least end on a good note, with a victory in Pennsylvania.

Santorum may also be hoping to garner more influence within the party, especially its growing conservative wing.

But expect increased calls, both publicly and behind the scenes, for Santorum to acknowledge what almost everyone else seems to have realized.

On CNN Tuesday, Piers Morgan asked Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom whether it was time for the other candidates to consider stepping down.

Mr. Fehrnstrom replied that he understands the "emotion and the hard work and the sweat that goes into a campaign" and what a personal decision it is to step down – but then made it clear he believes Romney's opponents are in denial.

"At some point the reality is going to set in that Mitt is the all-but-certain nominee," Fehrnstrom said. "I can tell you what Mitt Romney did four years ago when he found himself in the similar situation running against John McCain. After Super Tuesday, John McCain certainly didn’t have the delegates to become the nominee, but he was on track to get those delegates and Mitt Romney made the decision – and it was a difficult one – to step aside. And he stepped aside because he thought it was good for the country."

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