Even after Mitt Romney condemned a proposed controversial super PAC ad
attacking President Obama, CNN's Piers Morgan couldn't help but
speculate on whether the candidate was still playing dirty. On
Thursday's Piers Morgan Tonight he wondered aloud if the Romney campaign
leaked the failed proposal to the press to keep the Reverend Wright
controversy in the news.
"And I guess I think the really sinister aspect is, was it part of
their intention to just have it leaked to the front page of the New York
Times?" the ratings-starved [1] Morgan asked about the Romney campaign. "Then you get all the publicity anyway without actually spending any money."
The
proposed ad in question had already been rejected, followed by Romney's
"repudiation" of it – but the media still jumped on the story. And
ironically, Piers was doing the same thing he accused Mitt Romney of
doing – keeping the mention of Reverend Wright in the news cycle by
running three straight segments on the failed ad proposal.
Guest Kurt Andersen shot down Morgan's theory. "I just think it's too
stupid. I think this doesn't do them any good," he said of the campaign.
Piers wouldn't budge, though, and kept pushing his speculation.
"But Mitt Romney can stand as he did today and say, look, I knew
nothing about this. I'm as appalled as you are. Meanwhile, Jeremiah
Wright, who had disappeared off the radar, is now all over the news
agenda again. And you can bet your life that they will be repeating now
all over cable stations in America. They'll be playing his incendiary
comments."
[Video below the break. Audio here [2].]
Que the irony of Morgan keeping Wright in the news while complaining
about the media doing so. Meanwhile, even Time's Mark Halperin said it
was "McCarthyism" to hold Mitt Romney responsible for the ad. Yet Morgan
still grasped at a connection between Romney and the ad, through a
tenuous "leak" he thinks may have happened.
"The media tends to take associations of Republican candidates and make
– tie them around the neck of the Republican and say Mitt Romney has to
account for every Republican out there, every conservative, every
idea," Halperin declared on MSNBC's Morning Joe on Friday.
"It's McCarthyism to say Mitt Romney is responsible for everybody out
there who he has a direct or indirect contact to. That is what the Obama
people did. They're raising money off it. They're wasting a day of
campaign dialogue on it because it is effective for them," he continued.
A transcript of the segment, which aired on May 17 on Piers Morgan Tonight at 9:49 p.m. EDT, is as follows:
PIERS MORGAN: Well that's what I was saying earlier. To me it's
unfeasible that nobody in Mitt Romney's camp – he may have been
distanced, plausible deniability and all that.
KURT ANDERSEN, author, "True Believers": Or implausible deniability.
MORGAN: Somebody in his campaign would have known all about this. And I
guess I think the really sinister aspect is, was it part of their
intention to just have it leaked to the front page of the New York
Times? Then you get all the publicity anyway without actually spending
any money.
ANDERSEN: My suspicion is not. I don't go that next level of sinister –
MORGAN: Really? Anything about the behavioral patterns of these
politicians in Washington the last year made you feel less than cynical?
ANDERSEN: I feel entirely cynical. I just think it's too stupid. I
think this doesn't do them any good. I think what you're supposed to do,
if you're Mitt Romney's campaign, is make the people who are
uncomfortable with a black president feel uncomfortable without ever
mentioning black people.
MORGAN: But Mitt Romney can stand as he did today and say, look, I knew
nothing about this. I'm as appalled as you are. Meanwhile, Jeremiah
Wright, who had disappeared off the radar, is now all over the news
agenda again. And you can bet your life that they will be repeating now
all over cable stations in America. They'll be playing his incendiary
comments.
ANDERSEN: Chickens coming home to roost.
MORGAN: All that stuff. So he's back in the forefront of people's minds in relation to the president.
ANDERSEN: You might be right. My belief is that what this does is not
help Romney with the independents, that small group of people truly in
the middle who could go either way. This looks cynical and wretched and
unappealing.
MORGAN: Yes. However, it may help him with lots of other people, in
galvanizing people who have a race element to their thinking.
ANDERSEN: Talk about galvanizing, I think if you're an
African-American, 90 plus percent of whom voted for Barack Obama in the
last election, this galvanizes you into thinking oh, look at these
Republicans; they really are trying to make this dead-and-gone race
issue from four years ago a live issue again.
MORGAN: Playing Devil's Advocate, is there any part of Jeremiah Wright
which is relevant to this campaign? Is it unacceptable completely for a
Republican like Mitt Romney or his campaign to actually use anything
that Jeremiah Wright stood for against the President?
ANDERSEN: Nothing is unacceptable. I just think it won't work. And it's
– and people judged in 2008 that it was a minor, perhaps briefly
disturbing, then put to rest by Barack Obama himself issue. So it's not
-- it's not – it's ugly and it's stupid and perhaps beyond the pale by
certain judgments. But they can try whatever they want.
MORGAN: This (Inaudible) sort of an unpleasant undertone, the Abe Lincoln reference and all the rest.
ANDERSEN: Metrosexual Abe Lincoln, yeah.
MORGAN: Yeah. It was pretty awful, I thought, to say that. But let's be
realistic about political campaigns. When you watched the Republican
nominee race, for example, that was pretty vile. You had them all
lobbing bombs at each other. And at the end of it, they all kiss and
make up and they're all friends again. Is the public really that naive? I
mean, do we not just get used, conditioned to this? Has it not always
been like this?
ANDERSEN: I don't think it has been as much like this. And I think this
corrosive cynicism that is afoot in the land as regards to national
politics is just made worse by this. I recommend that people go read
this document closely. For instance, one of the things they propose is
changing the name of the super PAC to "Character Matters."
MORGAN: Yeah.
ANDERSEN: I mean, you can't – Aaron Sorkin couldn't make that up.