The right questions to ask

According to Tom Bevan at RCP, Kevin Madden has issued a denial. The denial however is of the non-denial denial subspecies.

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. …

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

The Hemingway piece made a mistake. It called these push polls. As Mark Blumenthal and Chuck Todd have made perfectly clear, these are not push polls. Maybe they are legitimate survey research. Maybe they are research gone awry. Perhaps even deliberately awry.

The actual denial leaves open the possibility that these were survey questions by the Romney campaign.  Those are neither "push polling calls" or "against our own candidate."

The right question for reporters to ask, and the question that the Romney campaign is avoiding answering is this:

Was the Romney campaign, Target Point, or any of their vendors placing phone calls — survey research, push polls, or otherwise — in Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina in the last three weeks that mentioned the word ‘Mormon’?  If so, please release the text of the script.