Mitt Romney tries to ease his Bain pain by using Hillary '08 clips to attack President Obama

Given the copious footage of Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Rick Perry going after Mitt Romney, you'd think his campaign would be smart enough to avoid using clips of Hillary Clinton from the 2008 primary in their own attack ads, but you'd be wrong, because in a new ad intended to defend Romney from his record of outsourcing at Bain, that's exactly where they go.

NARRATOR: Barack Obama's attacks against Mitt Romney: they're just not true. The Washington Post says, 'On just about every level, this ad is misleading, unfair and untrue.' But that's Barack Obama. He also attacked Hillary Clinton with vicious lies.

CLINTON (file footage): He continues to spend millions of dollars perpetuating falsehoods.

NARRATOR: Mitt Romney has a plan to get America working. Barack Obama? Worst job record since the Depression.

CLINTON (file footage): So shame on you, Barack Obama.

Given everything that's happened in the last four years, it's pretty lame to be using Hillary Clinton clips, but it's even lamer that the Romney campaign decided to go the extra mile and take Clinton out of context. The first clip they use might be dumb, but it's arguably fair game, but in the second clip they make it seem like Hillary Clinton is condemning Obama'and siding with Romney. Clearly, she's not.

Fortunately, that's such a ridiculous proposition that nobody will believe it, but it's revealing that Mitt Romney is so incapable of responding to Bain criticism on the merits that his campaign feels the need to gratuitously dissemble. If Romney had a good story to tell about Bain, he'd tell it. Instead, he's busily pulling videos about Bain from YouTube and twisting Hillary Clinton's words into something they're not.

But as pathetic as it is for Romney to use Hillary Clinton clips, the most absurd thing in this ad is that it uses the Washington Post to defend himself on outsourcing. Surely even Mitt Romney's campaign hasn't forgotten that it's the Washington Post'not President Obama'who called him one of the "pioneers of outsourcing." After all, earlier this week they asked the Post to retract the story'and the Post refused, because the story was true.