Nothing gets reporter Mike Allen hyperventilating like sticking it to the libs. Last week, Allen — former White House stenographer on the payroll of the Washington Post, now taking GOP dictation for Politico.com — reported a big gotcha on lefties who accused Mitt Romney of lying when he claimed he “saw” his father, the late liberal Republican governor of Michigan, George Romney, marching with Martin Luther King.

All of this evidence is important to present to the general public, but it is unnecessary for the Romney campaign — it has been clear for some time that they know perfectly well that the two men never marched together.

Allen “found” two eyewitnesses — probably with the help of the Romney campaign — who claim to remember seeing Gov. George Romney with King in Grosse Point, a wealthy enclave outside Detroit. One remembers the two men walking hand in hand:

“They were hand in hand,” recalled [Shirley] Basore, a former high-school English teacher. “They led the march. We all swung our hands, and they held their hands up above everybody else’s.”

She remembered the late governor as “extremely handsome.”

Another woman told Allen she remembers it vividly: “I was only 15 or 20 feet from where both of them were.”

It is possible that these two women saw Martin Luther King in Grosse Point in 1968, and they may have seen Gov. Romney at a civil rights march there in 1963. But, according to David Bernstein at the Phoenix, the historical record shows that the two men were never in Grosse Point — or anywhere else — at the same time:

Then-governor George Romney did indeed march in Grosse Pointe, on Saturday, June 29, 1963, but Martin Luther King Jr. was not there; he was in New Brunswick, New Jersey, addressing the closing session of the annual New Jersey AFL-CIO labor institute at Rutgers University.

Those facts are indisputable, and quite frankly, the campaign must have known the women’s story would eventually be debunked — few people’s every daily movement has been as closely tracked and documented as King’s. As I write this, I am looking at an article from page E8 of the June 30, 1963 Chicago Tribune, which discusses both events (among other civil-rights actions of the previous day), clearly placing the two men hundreds of miles apart. I also have here the June 30, 1963 San Antonio News, which carries a photo and article about Romney at the Grosse Pointe march; and an AP story about King’s speech in New Jersey.

A King researcher editing his letters from that time has stated definitively that the two men never marched together; Michigan and Grosse Pointe historians have stated definitively that King was not at the 1963 Grosse Pointe march; Michigan civil-rights participants of the time have concurred; so have those who worked for George Romney at the time.

The Romney team is, simply put, lying about this episode, Bernstein says:

All of this evidence is important to present to the general public, but it is unnecessary for the Romney campaign — it has been clear for some time that they know perfectly well that the two men never marched together.

Bear in mind that the Romney team has a substantial research team (and vast resources for outsourcing more). Bear in mind that the campaign has compiled vast documentation about the candidate’s father, particularly his civil-rights activities, long before the Phoenix posed the question earlier this week. Bear in mind that the campaign has direct access to George Romney’s materials and documents, his family members, his friends, his former staff, etc.

Believe me, they know the two men never marched together. This is an attempt to rewrite history. And even if it is a small rewriting, it is offensive.

Which brings us to a familiar question: Was Mike Allen complicit in the campaign’s deception, or was he simply lazy about checking the facts?

Mitt Romney has already had to backtrack on the claim that he actually saw his father with Martin Luther King. Mitt actually had the chutzpah to say that he was using a secondary definition of the verb “to see,” insisting that he “figuratively,” not literally, saw his father marching with Dr. King.

Politically, it’s a puzzle what Mitt hopes to gain from this. All this palaver about his support of civil rights for African-Americans might help him with his country-club base: folks who don’t approve of racism even though they don’t personally socialize with anyone who has brown skin. But the image of Mitt’s father marching with Martin Luther King will cost him votes among Christian nationalist voters, the GOP base whose reactionary views he insists he shares.

And telling easily debunked lies like this one will get Mitt Romney nowhere with both constituencies, who are used to the Bushies’ Teflon coated prevarications.

H/t: Blue Mass Group

Photo by Larry Steagall of the Kitsap Sun

We at Pensito Review applaud the wit and toast the resourcefulness of Art Conrad, Bremerton, Wash. His Xmas display makes him a defacto commander in the War on Xmas.

Art Conrad, who owns the home and put up the display, said the commercialization angle is the number one impetus for the display, but he’s also making a statement about political correctness. That he finds Santa on a cross a hilarious juxtaposition fits in the list of motives, too.

He got the idea a few years ago when he read a story about Japanese merchants mistakenly mixing up symbols in preparing for Christmas, putting Santa on the cross.

…Conrad thought the story was funny and decided that one day he’d have to put up a similar display. He created it by stuffing a Santa suit and borrowing the head off a motion-activated Santa that dances and sings Christmas carols.

The headless dancing Santa now carries a knife and sings and dances on Conrad’s front porch.

Conrad photographed the crucified Santa and created his own Christmas cards, one with the message, “Santa died for your MasterCard.”

“Santa has been perverted from who he started out to be,” Conrad said. “Now he’s the person being used by corporations to get us to buy more stuff.”

We get it, Art. You the man.

More signs that Republicans are giving a pass to Rudy and Mitt and reverting to the GOP primogenitor status quo, which means it may be John McCain’s turn, after all. In New Hampshire, where McCain beat George Bush by 20 points in 2000, American Research Group‘s tied with Romney:

Losing New Hampshire to McCain would be big blow for Romney, who was governor of neighboring Massachusetts.

McCain rebounded from a 25 percentage point deficit three weeks ago to tie Romney in American Research Group’s latest New Hampshire poll with 26 percent apiece. McCain also gained on Romney in a statewide Gallup Poll for USA Today, pulling within 7 percentage points of Romney. Romney led McCain 34 to 27 percent in that survey.

Losing New Hampshire to McCain would be big blow for Romney, who was governor of neighboring Massachusetts and so is familiar to the locals — whereas by a weird political calculus, all McCain has to do is come in second to “win” there.

In Iowa, McCain is running second to Huckabee, who has 28 percent support to McCain’s 20 percent. Romney is third with 17 percent, and Guiliani has 13 percent. (Eleven percent are still undecided.) McCain could “win” Iowa too if he comes in second.

McCain needs to come in second in South Carolina behind Huckabee, too, in order to winnow Romney out of the pack. But he’s in fourth place there now with 11 percent, according to a CBS poll released Thursday. Ahead of him are Huckabee with 28 percent, Romney 20 percent and Giuliani 12 percent.

Talk about your unintended consequences. A new poll shows that Oprah Winfrey’s public efforts on behalf of Barack Obama are turning off both younger and older women.

A Lifetime/Zogby poll of women shows that of those 18 to 29, almost a third said they were less likely to support the Illinois senator because of the Oprah support. Older women, over 65, also showed they were ruffled by Ms. Winfrey stepping “out of her pew,” as the daytime diva herself described it. About 17 percent of older women said the endorsement made them less likely to support Mr. Obama.

Boomer-aged women, however, were more open to Oprah’s guidance.

Among other age groups, those who disliked the endorsement were offset by an equal amount who said they were more inclined to look more favorably at Mr. Obama because of it.

A big “Amen, Sister!” to Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post, who asks the question so many Floridians and others would like to know, “Who Elected Iowa?”

The caucuses draw a small, unrepresentative sample of a small, unrepresentative state…

…[M]ost Iowans view the caucuses as an obscure art practiced by an elect few. “Usually I don’t go, because I’m afraid I’m going to get there and feel like a dummy,” one man on Ahn’s list confides.

And speaking of dummies, I was amazed to see the decision facing one Iowan.

Kay Baccam, 38, who works at an Iowa spice plant, said she liked Thompson but was leaning toward Clinton in part because of her gender.

“She would be the first woman (president) in history. That’s a good role model for kids and women,” she said.

Who winnows down their choices to Fred Thompson or Hillary Clinton? Really.

Besides — and I don’t know a thing about how it actually works, but — it sounds like the Democratic caucuses are separate from the Republicans ones. And in the Democratic caucus, if your candidate doesn’t get at least 15 percent of the vote, you have to pick someone else.

Political reporters, myself included, get misty over the notion of neighbors gathering on a cold winter night to hash out differences over who is the best candidate. But the caucus process also serves to disenfranchise…

The bizarre rules of the Democratic contest further distort the results. (Republicans employ a more straightforward method: The candidate with the most votes wins.) Why should a candidate who fails to meet the 15 percent threshold of viability walk away empty-handed? Why should the final outcome depend on how those losing campaigns decide where to throw their backing when, in caucus-speak, nonviable preference groups realign for a second round? No wonder the caucus process makes ordinary people’s heads hurt…

And perhaps the most important question: Given all this, why do we in the media invest the caucuses with such make-or-break significance?

When Florida Democrats were placed under a campaign blackout as punishment for the state legislature changing our primary date, we were told it was essential to the electoral process to preserve the system that lets Iowa and New Hampshire, two of our whitest states, choose first. I have never understood the rationale for this boneheaded move, but I believe it was brought to us by the same folks who sit in Congress now — unable to do anything different, ineffectual and inaudible, and wondering why the Republicans always win.