WASHINGTON - Mitt Romney headed to the
nation's capital Thursday to raise money for his front-running
Republican presidential campaign and meet with influential conservative
legislators, buoyed by recent primary wins and a key endorsement but
also facing fallout from a top adviser's gaffe.
The former Massachusetts
governor held talks with key Republicans including South Carolina Sen.
Jim DeMint and Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee.
Both men are leading conservatives who could help Romney gain support
from the Republican base by backing him.
DeMint, a tea party favorite, said he was impressed by Romney but stopped short of a full endorsement.
"I'm not only comfortable
with Romney, I'm excited about the possibility of him possibly being
our nominee," DeMint said, adding that "this is not a formal endorsement
and I do not intend to do that right now, but I just think we just need
to look at where we are."
DeMint strongly suggested
that rival candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, who are vying
for conservative support against the more moderate Romney, should drop
out to end the nomination fight and focus the party's efforts on
defeating President Barack Obama in November.
"I just hope at some
point they'll realize whether they can win or not," DeMint said of
Romney's top opponents. "If they can't, the best thing they can probably
do is to help the one who is going to win."
According to GOP aides,
Romney's meeting with Ryan was part of a larger session with members the
congressional delegation from Wisconsin, which holds its primary on
April 3. Romney also met with legislators from Pennsylvania, which holds
its primary on April 24.
Santorum and Gingrich,
meanwhile, continued to exploit a Wednesday comment by Romney's
senior campaign adviser to attack Romney over shifting stances on issues
such as health care and abortion during his career.
The adviser, Eric
Fehrnstrom, said the campaign will "hit a reset button" to take on Obama
in the fall if Romney wins the GOP nomination, adding, "it's almost
like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up, and we start all
over again."
Fehrnstrom's remak came
in response to a question about whether Romney had to adopt conservative
stances in the Republican campaign that could hurt him with moderates
in November, and his answer reinforced conservative fears that Romney
will revert to more moderate positions once he secures the nomination.
Both Santorum and
Gingrich sought to extend the Etch A Sketch image of Romney into a
second day, making sure they carried the popular drawing toy at campaign
events.
Santorum brandished an
Etch A Sketch at a speech on health care Thursday in San Antonio, Texas,
telling his insurance company audience: "I can tell you as someone who
doesn't have my policy positions on an Etch A Sketch -- and I carry one
of those around now -- my policy positions are written out of
conviction."
On Wednesday, Santorum's
campaign posted a photo on Twitter of the candidate using an Etch A
Sketch, saying it showed him "studying up on (Romney's) policy
positions."
A website unveiled
Thursday by the Gingrich campaign features the Fehrnstrom quote above an
Etch A Sketch that highlights Romney's policy shifts when viewers hit a
prompt labeled "shake." Written on the drawing toy is "Mitt's Etch A
Sketch Principles."
"You have this
over-and-over process where he's pro-choice and then he's not
pro-choice; he's pro-gun control then he's an NRA member who hunts
varmints," Gingrich said of Romney at a campaign event Thursday in
Houma, Louisiana. "... If you're serious about changing Washington,
D.C., you can't use an Etch-A-Sketch. You can't have a child's toy for a
president."
Gingrich explained to
reporters Wednesday why Fehrnstrom's remark resonated with
conservatives, saying: "You could not have found a more perfect
illustration of why people distrust Romney than to have his (adviser)
say that the Etch A Sketch allows you to erase everything in the general
election."
On the Tea Party Nation
website, blogger Judson Phillips wrote Thursday that the Etch A Sketch
image "is what conservatives have been warning about for months with
Romney."
"He is a liberal. He has
no core convictions and as soon as he becomes the nominee, he will move
far to the left," Phillips continued.
The caricature of Romney
as a politically motivated flip-flopper extends far beyond the
Republican campaign and right-wing blogosphere.
In an interview
broadcast Thursday on Public Radio International, Obama said Romney was
"pretending" the health care plan he instituted as governor of
Massachusetts differed from the national plan that Democrats in Congress
passed two years ago.
Santorum and other
conservatives have repeatedly attacked Romney over the Massachusetts
health care plan, while Romney says he never called for implementing
such a program at the federal level.
In the radio interview,
Obama pointed to similarities between the two plans without mentioning
the Republican front-runner by name.
"We designed a program
that actually previously had support of Republicans, including the
person who may end up being the Republican standard bearer and is now
pretending like he came up with something different," Obama said.
Former Senate Majority
Leader Tom Daschle took a dig at fellow Republican Romney at a dinner
Wednesday night honoring fellow former Senate Majority Leaders Bob Dole
and Howard Baker for their legacies of bipartisanship.
"Tonight, we are here to honor two distinct, different Republicans -- and no, I'm not talking about Mitt Romney," Daschle said.
Romney had no public
events scheduled Thursday while he attended fundraising events in the
Washington area after what should have been a triumphant Wednesday --
his 43rd wedding anniversary -- in which he picked up the prized
endorsement of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and celebrated his solid
victory in the Illinois primary the night before.
Instead, he had to try
damage control over Fehrnstrom's comment by taking one question from
reporters about the Etch A Sketch snafu.
"Organizationally, a
general election campaign takes on a different profile," Romney said.
"The issues I am running on will be exactly the same. I am running as a
conservative Republican. I was a conservative Republican governor. I
will be running as a conservative Republican nominee, at that point
hopefully, for president. The policies and positions are the same."
In a new campaign ad in
Wisconsin, which holds its primary April 3, Romney turned his focus to
the ever-increasing federal deficit.
The ad highlights
Romney's tenure as governor of Massachusetts, making the case that his
background as a corporate executive prepared him to run a fiscally sound
government.
Romney's message of
cutting deficits comes after the candidate acknowledged an economy on
the rebound, telling a crowd in Illinois this week that "I believe the
economy is coming back, by the way. We'll see what happens. It's had ups
and downs. I think it's finally coming back."
While Gingrich was
campaigning in Louisiana and Santorum was in Texas, Rep. Ron Paul of
Texas, the libertarian champion running well behind, had no campaign
events scheduled.
Both Gingrich and
Santorum brushed off the Bush endorsement for Romney, saying the son of
one Republican president and brother of another represents the GOP
establishment rather than the conservative soul of the party.
"It's a completion of
the establishment trifecta," Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond said in
reference to endorsements for Romney by former President George H.W.
Bush, former Sen. Bob Dole and now Jeb Bush.
After Romney's victory in the Illinois primary, analysts sounded like the Republican campaign was essentially over.
