Someone named Jon Miles sent an e-mail asking me to “clarify” last week’s post on the likelihood that Mitt Romney’s campaign has been running anti-Mormon push polls in an effort to drum-up sympathy for their candidate. I have no idea who this guy is, but here’s his “clarification”:

I was wondering if you’d mind clarifying something in a post you made the other day. You quoted me (through NRO) as saying that Lindorf (the founder of Western Wats) is a founder of the BYU Business School. That’s not quite true. He’s a founder for the business school’s Center for Entrepreneurship. It’s a volunteer/donor title at the Center.

Would you mind clarifying this? People have started to say that he’s THE founder of the BYU Business School.

Fine, the guy founded a part of the business school and not the business school. Your point? Lindorf is just one tiny piece of the puzzle.

Ask anyone who’s been involved in South Carolina politics, and they’ll no doubt tell you who was the architect of the push-polling Romney’s Mormonism to get it out of the way as a campaign issue.

As we predicted and as FITSNews just noted:

Our sources also say the mastermind of the sympathy-building effort is none other than Romney’s chief Southeastern strategist, Warren Tompkins. [...]

the FITSNews’ mailbox has been blowing up with commentary concerning these revelations …

“(Romney) cannot give the Kennedy-style religion speech unless he wins the Republican nomination,” said a 2008 campaign operative who spoke with FITSNews on the condition of anonymity. “Mormonism is a whole different ballgame than Catholicism, meaning his ability to engage it proactively with GOP primary voters is somewhat limited. Simulating an attack on his faith in an effort to build sympathy is one of the few tools available to him, which (Warren) Tompkins instinctively understands.”

But why New Hampshire? Why not Iowa or South Carolina, the early primary state where Tompkins is directly responsible for managing the campaign’s message?

“There is a good reason this happened in New Hampshire,” our source explained. “Romney already has a high level of support there, which means that any attack against him has a built-in defense mechanism. New Hampshire voters are much more likely to be tolerant of his faith than are South Carolina voters. The point is that Romney has insulation in New Hampshire that he does not have in South Carolina.” [FITSNews]

That’s just shocking!  I would never believe that someone like Tompkins would be capable of such a thing.