First We Get The "Etch-A-Sketch Moment" from Camp Romney . . .

. . . and now we get the concept of retroactive retirement:

This Political Wire tweet says it all: "Romney campaign comes up with worst talking point ever." It comes as a reaction to the appearance of Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser to Mitt Romney, on CNN's "State of the Union" with Candy Crowley. Gillespie told Crowley on Sunday that Romney, who has faced a slew of criticism this week over when exactly he left Bain Capital, "retired retroactively" from Bain.

Interestingly, the Romney Campaign's attempt to redefine Mitt's 1999 "leave of absence" from Bain as a "retroactive retirement" is a great example of yet another Romney Etch-A-Sketch moment. Gillespie said the exact same thing on Meet The Press this morning, so this is clearly a talking point that the Romney Campaign is intentionally pushing and not an example of someone misspeaking.

Do you know why Romney and his people have lost control of this situation? Because instead of admitting that some outsourcing occurred under Mitt's watch, they decided to come up with this elaborate explanation as to why a company's sole shareholder, sole director, chief executive officer and president -- who, by the way, was being paid a six-figure salary at the time -- really had no control over what was going on at Bain when the outsourcing was occurring.  As RomneyCo is learning the hard way, their attempt to explain all this away simply does not withstand even minimal scrutiny.

To use an Olympics analogy, it would be akin to a team trying to perform an intricate synchronized swimming routine only to have someone drain the pool while they are attempting it.  There's no water in the pool anymore, Mitt -- it's time for you and your people to climb out and dry off.