At NRO this morning, Mark Hemingway connected some dots between the Romney campaign and the firm behind the anti-Mormon calls made in Iowa and New Hampshire that have generated such buzz recently. As the title of the piece suggests, Hemingway uses these dots to raise the question of whether the Romney campaign was behind the calls in a bit of misdirection aimed at generating sympathy for their guy and preemptively defusing the religion issue.

Romney's national spokesman, Kevin Madden, fired back with this statement:

Let me be perfectly clear: our campaign was not and is not involved with any efforts to engage in alleged push polling calls against our own candidate.

The insinuation made by the National Review post is highly misleading, and I emphatically reject the entire premise of the headline and the theories promoted by anonymous political consultants cited in the posting.

Even cursory reviews of news reports would indicate that the research firm in question, Western Wats, is a prominent research collection company that was used by firms that are currently employed by rival campaigns. But, our campaign has been careful not to accuse anyone, especially since we have contacted the Office of the Attorney General in New Hampshire in an effort to get to the bottom of this matter.

Again, our campaign is not involved with efforts against our own candidate, and I reject outright even the slightest insinuation to the contrary.