Posted by Lambchop
“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 we start all over again.”
- Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney Campaign Senior Advisor
The quote that rocked the Republican Primary, inspiring other Republican candidates showing up at campaign events, passing out personal Etch-A-Sketch toys to their audience.
Key Romney Strategic Campaign Advisor, Eric Fehrnstrom,has been described as a lot of things: pugnacious, clever, quick-witted, street-smart, and scrappy. Of late, many Romney supporters and political analysts (from Rupert Murdoch to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell) have loudly disagreed over Fehrnstrom’s latest puzzling statement. Some have even called for his head over the gaffe. Many hope that Kevin Madden will play a more central role, handling televised interviews and Sunday morning roundtable discussions. The offense? Fehrnstrom made the comment Monday in an interview on MSNBC that Romney, like Scalia, believes the so-called individual mandate in President Obama's health care reform law is no tax.
While tongues may wag, the likelihood of Fehrnstrom being kicked to the curb is slim to none as he is credited with Romney’s quick responses and large leads in many states during the Republican primary. Principal at the Shawmut Group, Eric Fehrnstrom joined Mitt Romney in 2002 for Romney’s gubernatorial campaign for Massachusetts and later transitioned into a permanent staff position as Governor Romney’s Director of Communications. Graduating in1984 from the College of Communications at BU, Eric Fehrnstrom was a reporter for the Boston Herald and was later promoted to Statehouse Bureau Chief. He then served as a media relations expert as Assistant State Treasurer in Massachusetts. He finally returned to the private sector as Senior VP of Communications at a marketing and advertising agency. And met Governor Romney. The rest is history.
Arguably, Eric Fehrnstrom may be a genius at strategy and communications, but his television delivery leaves something to be desired – he looks a little like a snarky Drew Carey and projects an intellectual superiority with the media commentators.
GQ Magazine (yes it is apparently still published) wrote the proto-typical political hit piece on the Romney campaign, focusing on Fehrnstrom, labeling him “Mitt Romney’s Dark Knight”. (Perhaps all of the other Mormon tell-all articles were already assigned by Media Matters to other little-read magazines that week).
Best quote from the GQ article: “The best political operatives are the ones who provide their clients with a tangible quality the candidate himself lacks. If Karl Rove was Bush's brain, then Fehrnstrom is Romney's balls.”
That said, perhaps Fehrnstrom is better left to direct the strategy rather than communicate it personally. With his esoteric delivery and comments that do not translate well into sound bites – it might be time to lay off the TV cameras and get Romney’s poll numbers high enough to reflect the dissatisfaction of the nation.
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