On Friday, I confess having been super slow to pay attention to the details of the Romney push-polling story. In part, to be honest, because it’s so low — to use religion in such a crass way.

Mark Hemingway does a good job of mapping out some arrows that point in the direction of the Romney campaign as the source of the calls: but as both Mark and Team Romney explain in the piece, there are a lot of overlaps in the polling world that could explains the connections as complete coincidences.

Knowing the governor a little, I find it impossible to believe that Mitt Romney authorize such calls. (To get a feel for how he values his faith, see Byron today.) Further, knowing a good part of his senior national staff, I find it impossible to believe any of a number of them could live with the knowledge something like this was going on with Romney campaign authorization. Is someone freelancing within? The evidence Mark maps out in his piece certainly does not say so. As Mark says, the connections he maps out only raise more questions. So we have no idea, still — as the piece points out, there are arrows that can take you in the direction of more than Romney’s campaign.

I’ve not hated a 2008 story as much since we’ve started. The idea that any campaign would use religion as a tactic is infuriating. Religious freedom is such a fundamental in the United States – and it happens to be one Romney has fought for. American politics can do better. Republicans (assuming it’s Republicans behind it) should do better.