Rolling Yourself In Mud

by digby

This is really getting bizarre:

Something fishy is going on in New Hampshire and Iowa. Voters in the two early primary states have recently been getting phone calls raising questions about the Mormon faith and military deferments of presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, R-MA. The implication is that a rival candidate – with emphasis on Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, whose Vietnam service in referenced positively in these calls – is behind the dirty tricks, seeking to influence the minds of potential voters.

But a far more conspiratorial take is gaining steam in the blogosphere. The theory is that Romney’s campaign orchestrated the scheme, in hopes that the fallout would taint GOP rivals as character assassins.

If you read through the whole article it really appears that the people who did these calls have very close ties to Romney so it’s entirely reasonable to suspect that he’s manufactured this controversy to make his rivals look bad.

That’s a very risky thing to do because in order to make it work you also have to publicize the “smear” itself. Public relations 101 says that you never repeat your rivals’ attacks. Maybe Romney thinks he’s inoculating himself on the Mormon thing and maybe it will work. By casting his rivals as hitting below the belt perhaps he thinks those voters who are concerned about his Mormanism will recoil in horror. (But do people who really care about such things actually recoil in horror at the idea of a smear campaign? It seems like they relish them.)

What a weird campaign tactic.

Update: This pretty much clinches it, in my book.

.