Obama addresses his opponent's changing positions and women's issues in Virginia. | JAY WESTCOTT/POLITICO Obama: Mitt has 'Romnesia'

President Barack Obama on Friday accused his Republican opponent of having a bad case of “Romnesia” — changing positions when politically expedient.

The Obama campaign has long tried to find a powerful way to encapsulate its sense of Mitt Romney’s shifting positions, especially as some say he’s tacked to the center this fall to attract moderate voters, away from the self-described “severely conservative” candidate who appealed to the tea party during the Republican primaries.


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“I mean, he’s changing up so much and backtracking and sidestepping, we’ve got to name this condition that he’s going through. I think it’s called Romnesia,” Obama said to laughter and cheers at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., where he spoke to a midday rally of 8,000. “That’s what it’s called. I think that’s what he’s going through.”

Clearly enjoying himself, nearly giggling as he spoke, Obama continued: “Now, I’m not a medical doctor, but I do want to go over some of the symptoms with you — because I want to make sure nobody else catches it.”

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Like an announcer in a prescription drug ad or comedian Jeff Foxworthy, the president listed some symptoms, all having to do with women’s issues, the topic of his stump speech. “If you say you’re for equal pay for equal work, but you keep refusing to say whether or not you’d sign a bill that protects equal pay for equal work — you might have Romnesia.”

“If you say women should have access to contraceptive care, but you support legislation that would let your employer deny you contraceptive care — you might have a case of Romnesia,” he said.

“If you say you’ll protect a woman’s right to choose, but you stand up at a primary debate and said that you’d be delighted to sign a law … outlawing that right to choose in all cases — man, you’ve definitely got Romnesia.”

But Romnesia reaches beyond women’s issues, Obama said. “If you say earlier in the year, I’m going to give a tax cut to the top 1 percent and then in a debate you say, I don’t know anything about giving tax cuts to rich folks — you need to get a thermometer, take your temperature, because you’ve probably got Romnesia,” he said.

“If you say that you’re a champion of the coal industry when, while you were governor you stood in front of a coal plant and said, this plant will kill you, that’s some Romnesia,” he continued, the crowd shouting the punch line along with him.

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“You’re beginning to be able to identify these symptoms. And if you come down with a case of Romnesia, and you can’t seem to remember the policies that are still on your website, or the promises you’ve made over the six years you’ve been running for president, here’s the good news: Obamacare covers preexisting conditions,” Obama said, smiling. “We can fix you up. We’ve got a cure. We can make you well, Virginia. This is a curable disease.”

By Friday afternoon, Romnesia was catching on quickly.

Within an hour of Obama’s remarks, Romnesia — the campaign’s preferred spelling, an aide acknowledged — was trending internationally on Twitter and had hit the top of the U.S. trending list.

John Weaver, a top adviser to Jon Huntsman during his Republican primary bid, voiced his appreciation for the term. “Dang. #Romnesia is pretty funny,” he wrote on Twitter. “How come our team didn’t come up with that last [f]all?”

Later, Vice President Joe Biden joined in from the stump in Florida.

“I hope you all don’t get Romnesia!” Biden said in Fort Pierce. “It’s a bad disease, it’s a bad disease. And it’s contagious, because all of a sudden, Paul Ryan, the budget hawk — the guy who introduced a whole budget plan that actually already … passed the House of Representatives … all of a sudden, he doesn’t remember it.”

The Romney campaign didn’t directly hit back at Obama’s use of the term — and the Republican candidate doesn’t have a public event until an early evening rally in Florida — but it did release a statement from Virginia Delegate Barbara Comstock, who focused on the president’s message on women’s issues. “Women haven’t forgotten how we’ve suffered over the last four years in the Obama economy with higher taxes, higher unemployment, and record levels of poverty,” she said. “President Obama has failed to put forward a second-term agenda — and when you don’t have a plan to run on, you stoop to scare tactics.”

The Republican National Committee pointed to remarks Obama made in 2008 about civility in the presidential race.

“Let me tell you what you don’t deserve. You don’t deserve a bunch of name-calling. You don’t deserve a bunch of mud-slinging. You don’t deserve a bunch of Internet rumors and scandal-mongering. We don’t need John McCain and I to be demonizing each other. You won’t get that from my campaign,” he said in Bristow, Va., in June 2008.

Though Romnesia was new to Obama’s stump speech on Friday, the term has been around for months.

A Twitter user with the handle @BreakingNuts used it in a tweet to Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor of liberal magazine The Nation, defining it as “a severe form of amnesia that strikes dishonest politicians.”

It’s also been on Urban Dictionary since July, when a user called it: “The act of forgetting a statement or belief that you had previously expressed the opposite point of view with regards to.”

And, in June, POLITICO quoted a Daily Kos blogger who said Romnesia is the “public unremembrance the governor loves to apply when what he has done and said in the past is an inconvenient reminder of his political fickleness.”

Byron Tau contributed from Fairfax, Va.