A few days ago, Dick Morris announced on Hannity that, based on George Stephanopoulos’ debate questions to Mitt Romney about contraception, Stephanopoulos must be a “paid Democratic hit man.” Last night, Bill O’Reilly shot down Morris’ theory – not that Stephanopoulos was acting as a Democratic operative, but that he was paid for it.

Morris’ theory is that it’s no coincidence that the debate question arose right around the time President Obama’s contraception mandate was issued. That, plus Stephanopoulos’ aggressive questioning of Romney was proof, according to Morris, of a Stephanopoulos/Obama/Democratic/ABC plan “to set up contraception as the new social issue replacing abortion to separate the left and the right.”

According to Morris, this all added up to Stephanopoulos being “contracted by the Democrats to lay a hit on Romney by getting Romney to admit, to say that he favored contraception.”

As he often does in cases like this, O’Reilly was sly in his response. He expressed outrage on Stephanopoulos’ behalf but he did nothing to put a dent in Morris’ overall credibility.  In fact, O’Reilly perpetuated the fiction that Morris is a credible pundit, just partially wrong. I can assure you O’Reilly would have roared an attack had anyone suggested even a hint of collusion between a Fox News debate question and the GOP.

O’Reilly said to Morris:

“Your explanation is logical… Certainly George Stephanopoulos is obsessed with contraception… But you can’t say he’s on the take… You can say, ‘Gee, it’s an eerie coincidence,’ and ‘Gee, he was a Democratic guy under Clinton, maybe he’s getting stuff.’ You can’t say he’s in their pocket, taking money.”

In other words, it’s quite logical that Morris came to such a crackpot theory, according to O’Reilly, it’s just unproven.

Morris argued that he knew Stephanopoulos, that he had “basically” worked for Morris in the Clinton administration and that they were “constantly doing that.”