The Romney campaign, which likely clinched the Republican nomination recently with a win in Texas, may not actually be putting its candidate up for the Presidency of the United States of America – at least not according to an app the campaign recently released.
The Romney campaign recently released an iPhone (News - Alert) app called "With Mitt," an app that allows users to take pictures, and then add their choice of 14 different phrases to the picture before sending the photo out to either friends social networking sites.
And while the app was supposed to garner some good will for Romney, the mood quickly turned much more lighthearted than expected when one of the 14 phrases turned up misspelled.
The phrase was supposed to be "A Better America".
The phrase actually released was "A Better Amercia".
Twitter users then seized the phrase in a death grip, rapidly retweeting it along with a wide variety of less-than-complementary terms mocking the candidate's perceived lack of spelling capability. Some wondered about "Amercian Exceptionalism" and one Twitter (News - Alert) poster expressed his fondness for "Amercia Teh Buetiflu".
The Romney campaign, in turn, said they had filed an updated version that fixed the minor typo, but since Apple (News - Alert) needs to approve updates before they go live, it could take an as yet undetermined length of time to appear fixed.
Those familiar with the eighties are keen to a similar Republican spelling gaffe, as then-Vice President Dan Quayle claimed "potato" had an extra "e" to the end of the word during a spelling issue with a student. While this gaffe was often seen as one of the many reasons for the Bush-Quayle losses to Bill Clinton in 1992, the exact power of that gaffe is strictly a matter of speculation.
Given the social weight of the Internet – which some see as a reason Barack Obama won in 2008 – it remains to be seen just how much damage Romney's own "potatoe" moment does to his campaign.
And since Ron Paul isn't officially out of the running, the nomination mat not yet be a lock for Romney.
Two things, however, are quite plain: this is an embarrassment to the Romney campaign, as well as an excellent example of the true power of the Internet to gather and disseminate information rapidly. How readily Romney will recover from the social mistake is a point to keep a watch on.