Allahpundit thoroughly covered the lead-up to and subsequent total obliteration of the Obama campaign’s fun new swipe at Mitt Romney yesterday; in a nutshell, “either Romney misrepresented himself to the SEC (translation: Felony!), or he misrepresented himself to the America people.” Well, that’s us cornered! Not. But why should that stop Team Obama from defending their ridiculous line of attack? I wonder if Obama campaign press secretary Ben LaBolt has ever been acquainted with the phrase, “To lead with one’s chin”:

“I think the question is fair, did he misrepresent himself to the SEC when he signed documents saying he was chairman of the board, president and CEO, sole owner, and sole shareholder during that period or did he misrepresent himself to the American people when he said he left Bain during that period?” LaBolt said. “I think that’s absolutely a fair question to raise and he can clear it up by releasing the normal amount of tax returns for a nominee of a major party.”

No, Mr. LaBolt — it’s actually really not fair. Not only are you presenting a completely false dichotomy of possibilities, but you don’t just run around pulling dumb “Well, we don’t yet have any evidence to the contrary, so this could be possible!” accusations out of thin air (made even dumber by the fact that we do have evidence the contrary, and amply so).

I’m pretty much in agreement with Charles Krauthammer on this one. Team Obama can probably win points by painting Mitt Romney as a lot of things: Boring, vanilla, out-of-touch, wealthy elitist, vulture capitalist without a heart, unpatriotic and greedy for having offshore bank accounts, blah blah blah. But less than law-abiding? The man comes off as cleaner than a whistle! Now Team Obama just looks silly.

So when they accuse him of deliberately lying to the SEC and committing a felony, they are then retroactively questioning all the series of charges up to then. That’s jumping the shark. That is a mistake.

I think there is not evidence on both sides on this; it’s all on one side. What happened is he left Bain capital suddenly. He was offered the job [with the Salt Lake Olympic Games] and nine days later accepted it. Bain is incredibly complex. Normally you have years to unwind a guy stepping down with all of the associated investment. He leaves in nine days. His own company, as you quoted, which included Obama contributors, said he had no involvement whatsoever — unequivocally ever — after that day. There is not a shred of evidence he was involved in anything after that date. He signed documents because officially, or at least technically, he had to unwind his position. That is all that you see in the SEC documents. No one showed otherwise. Factcheck.org, “The Washington Post,” not exactly a right wing rag, and a lot of other sources looked at this and said the charges are false.