Romney really IS the "change" candidate. He'll change after the convention.

Maybe Romney and Santorum should now be called Etchy and Sketchy...

On CNN this morning, Romney's Communications Director, Eric Fehrnstrom, deflected the accusation that his candidate's hard-right primary stances would hurt him in the general election.

Well, 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 of over again.

I cannot freakin' believe that Fehrnstrom would say a thing like that. Sure, Romney's gonna do that, but nobody with any political smarts would come right out and say those words.

Fehrnstrom just handed a massive amount of ammo to his political enemies in both parties. He may well end up getting the sack. Telling the truth is the one unforgivable sin of modern politics.

The Ryan budget and the YouTube record will make it hard to argue that ultra-libertarianism was just a temporary phase for the GOP. Within his party, Romney has given the conservative core good reason to stay home on election day.

Romney is indeed a lot like an Etch A Sketch. He's plastic, he's red, he's frustrating to deal with, he sends out an ever-changing series of unclear pictures, and he seems to be an inevitable part of our lives even though nobody considers him fun. Both the Romney campaign and the Etch A Sketch are unforgiving machines: If you make one small mistake, you can't undo it. (Just ask Fehrnstrom). Also, the diagonals are a bitch. And curved lines...? Forget about it.

Somewhere in the course of the previous paragraph, my metaphor broke down.