Mitt Romney likes Wawa, a convenience store chain in the mid-Atlantic states. He visited one in Pennsylvania on Sunday and ordered a hoagie sandwich. Later, he raved about the experience to a local crowd—stressing how “amazed” he was by its touchscreen technology.

Today, left-leaning blogs are trying to declare the refreshing moment of (what appears to be) genuine enthusiasm a gaffe. In fact, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell said it might be his “super market scanner” moment—referring to George H.W. Bush’s supposed astonishment over a scanner during his 1992 reelection campaign—offering a glimpse of how out of touch Romney is with the rest of America.

Or maybe the guy’s just geeked out about touchscreen order—it is pretty cool.

[UPDATE: Turns out, Mitchell framed Romney's statement to make it seem like he was out of touch. Romney was amazed by the touchscreen technology, because he was making a larger point about wasteful government.]

Either way, the term “Wawa-gate” is starting to gain traction on social media.

So the statement might—and it’s an enormous might—be a slight setback for Mitt Romney, but it’s a PR windfall for Wawa. Not only did the name of the store become a trending topic on Twitter nationwide, but also sparked hundreds of media articles on the store. As one journalist on Twitter pointed out, Wawa was a Twitter trending topic locally in Los Angeles—thousands of miles from the nearest location.

The official Wawa Twitter account has not weighed in yet.

Now, President Obama will have to drop in to a Wawa and have his own hoagie. And if he’s amazed by the store’s touch screen technology, he had better keep it himself.

Here’s the MSNBC version of Romney's statements:



And here are his statements, minus the creative editing:



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