More good news for McCain in NH - Romney Attacks McCain For Reprehensible “Push Polling” Calls, Which McCain Has Condemned
The good news for Senator McCain continues this week… although via a very bizarre turn of events, today…
On Thursday night, November 15, a story came over the AP wires that Mitt Romney has been attacked by reprehensible “push polling” calls, in Iowa and New Hampshire. They are unethical and should not be tolerated by candidates, campaign staff, consulting firms, or pollsters.
As for the villain behind the calls - initial AP reports seemed to point to Rudy Giuliani’s campaign (read the AP article here, for more as to why that seemed to be the case). However, as Friday progressed, the Giuliani theory grew less plausible.
Instead, Romney decided to attack McCain and lay the blame at his doorstep. This makes no sense, for the following reasons:
a) McCain was the victim of such malicious tactics in South Carolina in 2000 (before McCain-Feingold was even enacted);
b) One of McCain’s strong suits is ethical campaigning, of which one manifestation is the McCain-Feingold legislation;
c) Even if McCain wanted to use “push polls” against Mitt, it would make absolutely no sense that a campaign struggling to raise money, would waste a dime of its precious cash-on-hand, on something like that…
d) Why would Mitt bypass Rudy and instead attack McCain - over whom he has a huge lead in NH polling? (Albeit, primarily because Mitt has purchased his lead by spending a fortune on ads, and secondarily due to his being well-known there as a former governor of neighboring Massachusetts…)
It’s very unusual for the guy in the lead to attack someone far behind him. Why wouldn’t Mitt attack Giuliani, who -
a) given what was believed - to all of us at the time on Friday - to be possibly the actual candidate, responsible for these disgusting calls in the first place;
and
b) is far closer to him in the polls?
Here’s how ABC News’s Political Radar reported the story:
Anti-Romney Attack Calls Anger GOP Candidate
November 16, 2007 1:32 PM
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There are a couple articles tying Romney to the company that made the calls. It seems to be a lot of rumors right now, but your article is right about why it doesn’t make sense that the McCain campaign would be involved. In addition, it would be incredibly stupid (which I guess it is regardless of the culprit) to implicate your own candidate in the shady calls too.
http://www.eyeon08.com/2007/11/16/romneys-friends-with-western-wats-family
http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/1107/Romneys_Western_Wats_connections.html
Thanks for the comment…
The whole thing just keeps getting more and more mysterious. I suppose at this point I think the most plausible theory is that it’s some loose cannon unaffilated with a campaign who did this. That having been said, polling (legitimate or otherwise) is really expensive and it’s difficult to imagine that there isn’t someone of consequence, somewhere, who either gave the green light to this or deliberately looked the other way. As more and more people learn more about Western Wats, the polling firm that made the calls, we’ll see what emerges…