No one knows which candidate is responsible yet (though it's fairly likely one of them's to blame), but residents of Iowa and New Hampshire have reported some aggressive push polling phone calls casting Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney in a negative light. Push polling is a particularly sneaky tactic once favored by Karl Rove back when he was trying to get George W. Bush elected in 2000. He set up recorded phone calls to random voters which were disguised as polls but were actually designed to plant negative information about candidates. For example, one of the calls asked primary voters if they would be upset were they to discover John McCain had an illegitimate black baby. And so on. However, these recent push polls against Romney seem to only suggest information that's actually true. From CNN:
Among the questions was whether a resident knew that Romney was a Mormon, that he received military deferments when he served as a Mormon missionary in France, that his five sons did not serve in the military, that Romney's faith did not accept blacks as bishops into the 1970s and that Mormons believe the Book of Mormon is superior to the Bible.
The military record and Bible comments aside, isn't it noteworthy that a presidential candidate belongs to a church with such a blatant and recent record of unabashed racism? More details here.
