ROMNEY: I'M NO LONGER WITH STUPID

Another reason that Eric Fehrnstrom's Etch A Sketch comment won't hurt Romney (in addition to the ones I spelled out here) is this: Fehrnstrom, by saying that Romney will just swap some new rhetoric for his current rhetoric, is telling us that Romney agrees with us that what we've heard from the GOP in the first three months of this year is loony and extreme. Yeah, those people are wackos and losers! I'm not running with that crowd anymore! It's sort of like a Sister Souljah moment, except without any of the uncomfortable actually-criticizing-someone-on-your-side-directly stuff. (And never mind the fact that Romney did more than his share of the crazy talk.)

Also, after we get past the current wave of mockery, we're going to get the think pieces from mainstream pundits that say Romney was displaying actual gumption by insulting the crazies this way (never mind that he didn't do it himself, and even his surrogate didn't have the guts to do it directly). This will be described as a bird-flip done out of principle, not as a gaffe or a calculated move made out of a deep cynicism. The pundits will fall for it.

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AND FINALLY: Romney didn't say it -- it was uttered by a guy 0.00001% of the electorate has heard of. And it's a remark about campaigning, not about, you know, life. "I like to fire people" is something people can relate to (in a negative way.) The same with talk about owning multiple Cadillacs. This is about the campaign, and is much less meaningful to people who aren't particularly interested in the campaign than it is to people like us.