A senior adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Wednesday insisted the former Massachusetts governor wasn’t being hurt by adopting more conservative positions during the primary because he could “start over again” for the general election.

During an interview on CNN, John Fugelsang asked Romney Communications Director Eric Fehrnstrom if an extended primary against Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum would “force the governor to tack so far to the right it would hurt him with moderate voters in the general election?”

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“I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign,” Fehrnstrom replied. “Everything changes.”

“It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch,” he added. “You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”

“You get a second look,” CNN political analyst Ron Brownstein agreed. “But it is not, I think, a complete blank slate. There are positions that Romney has taken on a variety of issues — particularly those relating to Hispanics and to some extent the debate over contraception and its potential effect on college-educated women — that he is going to have to deal with going forward.”

The Etch A Sketch is a mechanical drawing toy that has been sold by the Ohio Art Company since 1960. The device can be turned upside down and shaken to clear the screen.

Watch this video from CNN’s Early Start, uploaded March 21, 2012.

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(H/T: The Hill)