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