Fox Cuts Ties To Dick Morris After Pundit’s Embarrassing Election Predictions
Fox has cut ties to Dick Morris, the pundit with a track record for predictions that didn’t pan out.
The political commentator made headlines this fall when he predicted a landslide victory for Mitt Romney in the presidential election. The prediction was panned at the time, when even the best estimates for Romney showed a close race, and many rightly believed that Barack Obama was pulling away.
A spokesperson for the network said Fox cuts ties to Dick Morris as his contract expires. Morris was seldom seen on Fox News after his big prediction for the election fizzled, The Associated Press noted.
In a time when election predictions were growing more accurate — led by FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver and his mathematical model for reading polls — Morris’ partisan predictions had an dwindling audience.
In fact, the news that Fox cuts ties with Dick Morris is not surprising to those following election coverage closely. And Morris himself seemed to admit that he was a political pundit rather than an unbiased observer.
Shortly after the election, Morris explained to Sean Hannity that his predictions were not meant necessarily to be accurate, but to give the Romney camp a boost, The Huffington Post noted.
Sean, I hope people aren’t mad at me about it … I spoke about what I believed and I think that there was a period of time when the Romney campaign was falling apart, people were not optimistic, nobody thought there was a chance of victory and I felt that it was my duty at that point to go out and say what I said. And at the time that I said it, I believe I was right.
Though Fox cuts ties to Dick Morris, the pundit will still have a home on television. On his website, Morris announced that he’ll appear on CNN’s Piers Morgan show on Wednesday to talk politics.
