But campaign-finance records suggest the industry no longer views Mr. Obama, who famously employed the Internet to mobilize supporters, with the same excitement — though he still outshines presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

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In case you’ve missed the sandstorm, Eric Fehrnstrom, a top Romney adviser, said on Wednesday that if Romney wins the GOP nomination, the campaign will “hit a reset button” to take on President Obama in the fall.

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

While Romney’s rivals have pounced on the comment — Newt Gingrich’s camp has even created a SketchyRomney app — Etch A Sketch fans have pounced on the venerable toy, buying it in droves on Amazon.com.

Politico reports that sales of the 1950’s relic shot up more than 2,000 percent on the e-commerce site, while Ohio Art Company, the maker of Etch A Sketch, saw its stock hit a 52-week high yesterday, before closing at $9.65, more than double its Wednesday closing price of $4.

Here at AllThingsD, we say: Why go for the plastic version, when you can play with a digital Etch A Sketch on your mobile appendages?

That’s right: Campaign platforms, errant Twitpics, awkward remarks — all erased with the shake of an iPad.

It’s a politician’s best friend.

For iPhone, there’s Etch A Sketch Premium, from Freeze Tag, Inc., a company that makes casual games for mobile devices and personal computers. It costs just 99 cents (or about 0.000001309367724577594 percent of the $75,609,012 Romney has raised to date).

Unlike the physical Etch A Sketch, users of this app can change the color of the toy’s frame, choose from a color palette when drawing, use predrawn shapes or a background (like Hangman), and share their drawings with friends via email, Facebook or a photo album. As with the original Etch A Sketch, you simply shake it to erase it.

But a smartphone screen is just too small for this kind of app, and the knobs of the Etch A Sketch appear to be cut off at the bottom. You can use your finger to draw, but that seems like Etch A Sketch sacrilege.

Fortunately, there’s an iPad app from the same company. This one costs $2.99, and is the real deal.

The Draw Something addicts out there can share their Etch A Sketch iPad drawings with friends over Wi-Fi. Or, users can draw alone, add photos from a photo album, use colorful stamps, share through Facebook and even access an iPod song library to set sketches to a soundtrack … like, maybe a campaign soundtrack?

For Android devices, there’s a free version of Freeze Tag’s Etch A Sketch with ads; and a 99-cent version without. There’s also the 99-cent Etch-a-Doodle app, which replicates the Etch A Sketch experience.

Those who would rather pay a more visible homage to Etch a Sketch can check out these retro red covers for mobile devices.

And if you’re feeling really ambitious, you can attempt to make a Kinect-a-Sketch, as these guys did, as seen in the video below:

(Photo courtesy of Flickr/The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis)

I was a big Clinton and Gore supporter in the 90s … I turned 40 last year and so I figured it was time to make the switch.

– Marc Andreessen, on CNBC, talking about his support for Mitt Romney

Consider this: The Republican winner of the Iowa Caucus race won by only eight votes. Mitt Romney received 24.55 percent of the total, while former Senator Rick Santorum took home 24.54 percent — a very narrow victory.

In the New Hampshire primary last week, Mitt Romney also won, this time by a larger margin.

But on Zazzle, where customers get to design customized products and sell them on its marketplace, U.S. voters are voting with their pocketbooks.

For example, interest in Rick Santorum exploded in January. The number of people searching for his apparel and other merchandise is already five times greater than it was during the entire month of December.

Some of his popular apparel includes a “Rick Santorum has a raging clue,” T-shirt, and the more straightforward “Rick Santorum 2012″ coffee mug.

Meanwhile, searches for Mitt Romney’s products are only three times higher over the same time period. A popular button for Romney declares. “Mitt is Legit.”

President Barack Obama has a little more diversity of products on offer, probably because he’s been in the spotlight for longer. There’s the regular assortment of T-shirts and pins, of course, and also mouse pads, iPhone covers, skateboard art and ties.

Not all of the gear is always positive; some items might reflect how much someone dislikes a candidate.

Every year, the Iowa caucus is used to gauge which candidates U.S. voters prefer at the time, even if the outcome does not result in the selection of a national delegate.

Similarly, Redwood City, Calif.-based Zazzle believes it has a big enough forum to conduct a meaningful poll of its own. Tomorrow, the company will kick off a poll that will analyze design and purchasing behavior up until the day before Super Tuesday, which falls on March 6 this election year.

In the past, Zazzle has often been used by Americans to cast their vote. On the site, more than 2.5 million custom political designs, and one million political clothing items have been sold to date.

“Whereas Twitter and Facebook reflect consumer opinions through text, sites like Zazzle are where the physical manifestation of ideas and opinions take place. This has been an accurate form of pre-determining political stories since the 2008 election,” said Josh Neuman, Zazzle’s head of political merchandising and analyses, in a statement.

For instance, the year before Barack Obama took office in 2008, 21,099 items Obama-related items were created on Zazzle, 73 percent percent of which were positive.

The final poll won’t be unveiled until March, but in the meantime, here are some other recent trends Zazzle has witnessed:

• Interest in Santorum has exploded. The number of people searching for Santorum merchandise in January is already five times greater than during the whole month of December.
• Romney is seeing three times as much traffic.
• In January, there’s been a dramatic surge in merchandise sales for Ron Paul, who currently outsells Obama by nearly three times.
• Obama merchandise continues to be a top seller, but 60 percent of the items are anti-Obama themed.
• People are still buying merchandise for dropped-out candidates, including Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann. The sales for either of these candidates are higher than those for Gary Johnson, who is still in the race.

Whitman has been increasingly active in the Republican party since retiring from eBay in January. She initially spent her time helping raise money for Mitt Romney, her former boss at Bain & Co., in his failed presidential campaign. More recently, she has been helping run Sen. John McCain’s presidential bid. She was a contender for the VP slot before McCain selected Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

On Tuesday night, Whitman all but announced her candidacy for governor of California at the Commonwealth Club.

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Q: You said in the past that a CEO should probably serve 10 years. You’ve served eight. What are your plans? Will you follow your own advice?

A: The first piece of advice I wish someone had given me as a freshman CEO is to keep your mouth shut. Somehow I didn’t get that advice, which is don’t talk about when you’re coming or when you’re going because it just creates a set of questions that probably aren’t productive.

–eBay CEO Meg Whitman, San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 19, 2006

Looks like eBay CEO Meg Whitman may make good after all on her pledge that no CEO should stay more than a decade. Whitman, the public face of eBay for the past 10 years, is reportedly preparing to retire. She has been delegating more tasks to deputies over the last few months and is expected to decide on her retirement in the coming weeks, The Wall Street Journal reports, quoting “people familiar with the matter.”

John Donahoe, who joined eBay in 2005 to lead its auction business unit, is the leading candidate to succeed her.

Rumors of Whitman’s imminent departure come at a critical time for eBay. The company is due to report earnings for the fourth quarter tomorrow. And though this quarter includes the traditionally strong year-end holiday period, it will likely be marred by a general slowing in eBay’s core auction business and the company’s continued struggles with Skype, the Internet telephony outfit for which it recently took a $1.4 billion write-down.

So perhaps it’s a perfect time for Whitman to step aside. Certainly she leaves a storied career behind her. She led the company through its 1998 initial public offering, and from there through some 40 quarters of sequential revenue growth. An impressive achievement by any measure–Skype acquisition be damned. Now, maybe it’s time to move on to bigger things.

Much bigger. Like perhaps a position in the cabinet of friend and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney (shown below, left, with Whitman and VC Steve Jurvetson)? Whitman can’t be suffering through those Romney fund-raising telethons for nothing, right?