"With the shake of an Etch-A-Sketch, Mitt Romney reinvents himself" -- this time as a poverty fighter

Blogger Igor Bobic so appropriately reintroduced the Etch-A-Sketch metaphor to remind us what we disliked about Mitt Romney in 2012.    The quote in my headline is from Bobic's blog.   If my memory is correct, it was one of Romney's own campaign advisers who first used the metaphor.  He was answering a question about how Romney would shift from the GOP primary mode, which pushed him to the right, to the need to move back to the center for the general election.

The metaphor stuck because . . . it's such a perfect fit.

In speaking to the Republican National Committee last week, Romney tried to mark out his appeal as a possible third-time contender for the presidential nomination.    And apparently he and his advisers have decided that this time he should appeal to the 47% instead of disparaging them.

He outlined his possible platform as:   making the world safer with a more muscular foreign policy, providing opportunity to all Americans, and lifting people out of poverty.

"It's a tragedy, a human tragedy, that the middle class in this country by and large doesn't believe that the future will be better than the past," he said. "We haven't seen rising incomes over decades."

"The rich have gotten richer, income inequality has gotten worse and there are more people in poverty than ever before under this president," the new Mitt added.

So, to quote Igor Bobic:  "With the shake of an Etch-A-Sketch, Mitt Romney . . . "

He stressed his years as an LDS pastor, a topic he and his campaign rarely broached in 2012, and described working "with people who are very poor to help them get help."

Better shake that thing a few more time, Mitt.   Because all these quotes from 2012 are going to come back to haunt you.   Like:

"I'm in this race because I care about Americans. I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it."

"Corporations are people, my friend ... of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people."   [By "the people," he must mean the stockholders, hardly the nation's poor people."]

And of course his infamous remarks about "the 47 percent:"   "My job is not to worry about those people -- I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

And then there's his embrace of the Paul Ryan 2012 budget, which would have made draconian cuts to programs affect the poor, including Medicaid and Social Security.   And his promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act and its subsidies for the poor."

You got a plan for how to answer to all that, New Mitt?    Or do you just give another shake to the Etch-A-Sketch and hope enough people forget Mitt 2.0?

Ralph