Mark Hemingway's Latest Negative Piece on Romney Does Not Go Unchallenged

Mark Hemingway of National Review has somewhat of a history when it comes to taking a negative slant regarding Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. From his earlier pieces where he erroneously wrote that Romney's accomplishments show "style over substance" to a later article where he mentions Romney's "controversial religious beliefs", Hemingway has truly been no friend of the former governor.

In his latest along those lines, titled "Did Mitt Romney Push Poll Himself?", Hemingway poses the question of whether or not the Romney campaign may have initiated the negative phone polls against himself in New Hampshire and Iowa. The preponderance of proof for giving cause to this speculation is a convoluted relationship between a communications firm, Western Wats, who Hemingway seems to implicate in the calls, and Target Point Consulting, which Romney '08 is contracting for the campaign for consultancy work.

Hemingway's "smoking gun" seems to be the fact that Target Point may have used Western Wats - one of the nation's largest telephone research outfits that "conducts 7000 projects a year" (according to MyManMitt.com) - on a previous occasion. This is the be all, end all for what he feels gives him cause to demand that Western Wats and Target Point detail all of their previous projects to "exonerate" Romney and "end (his) speculation".

Both Western Wats and Target Point Consulting have responded with unyielding denials that there was any involvement in the polls, as has the Mitt Romney campaign, itself.

Of note, is Target Point Consulting's response, to which National Review Editor Kathryn Jean Lopez added: "EDITOR'S NOTE: NRO did not contact TargetPoint and should have KJL", regarding the lack of homework put into the story before launching the speculative piece.

Alex Gage, President of Target Point, states in his Letter to the Editor, "I am not sure what, if any, motives the author may have, but now that it has been published, this piece has unfairly smeared me, my firm and the Romney campaign."

Looking back at some of the past contributions that have come from Hemingway can shed a lot more light, possibly, on those motives than the dots he mistakenly attempted to connect sheds light, certainly, on any involvement by Romney.