Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich were quick to pounce on comments made Wednesday morning by Eric Fehrnstrom, a top adviser for Mitt Romney.
When asked if the Romney team was worried about moving too far to the right and distancing moderates, Fehrnstrom replied, "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 over again."
Wednesday afternoon Matt Beynon, deputy communications director for Santorum's campaign, tweeted a photo of Santorum playing with an Etch A Sketch, with the comment "@RickSantorum studying up on @MittRomney policy positions."
Santorum, with Etch A Sketch in hand, jumped on Ferhnstrom's comments during a campaign stop in Louisiana Wednesday. "One of Governor Romney’s aides today on television said that Governor Romney, after he wins the primaries, will be like an Etch A Sketch," Santorum said, according to ABC News. "You take whatever he said and you can shake it up and it will be gone and he’s going to draw a whole new picture for the general election. Well that should be comforting to all of you who are voting in this primary."
“That whoever you are going to vote for is going to be a completely new candidate, remove all trace of any kind of marks and be able to draw a new picture. Maybe a picture sort of like when he ran for governor of Massachusetts, not as a conservative. One thing you can say -- even my staunchest critics will say -- is what you see is what you get."
Gingrich also made a campaign speech holding up an Etch A Sketch Wednesday.
"How many of you have ever had an Etch A Sketch? My children had Etch A Sketches, they were great for car rides. But you'll notice that their pictures aren't permanent, their pictures aren't locked down. You can redo it any time you want," Gingrich said, according to Politico's Ginger Gibson. "That's the problem. If you're somebody who invents RomneyCare and at the signing ceremony you say that your closest collaborator was Teddy Kennedy, it's really hard to explain to us that you're really conservative."
"So here's Gov. Romney's staff, they don't even have the decency to wait until they get the nomination to explain to us how they'll sell us out, and I think having an Etch-a-Sketch as your campaign model, raises every doubt about where we're going."
According to Gibson, Gingrich gave his Etch A Sketch to a kid in the front row, saying "You can now be a presidential candidate."
Gingrich and Santorum have highlighted Romney's gaffes and flip-flops to try to turn the tables on Romney, who is currently the GOP frontrunner after a dramatic win in Illinois Tuesday night.