October 01, 2014 12:38 PM UTC

Wow, That Was Stupid

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• by: Colorado Pols

Last Monday, as Democrats were gleefully circulating video of GOP U.S. Senate candidate Cory Gardner's rough interview with FOX 31's Eli Stokols, Republican surrogates for Gardner were looking for something–anything–with which to change the subject.

As Talking Points Memo reports, they chose poorly:

On Monday, Republican operatives seemed to think they had a bonafide gamechanging gaffe on their hands. In a video debunked by Business Insider, Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) appeared to endorse one of the widely discredited 9/11 conspiracy theories in 2007. “There’s some evidence that were charges planted in the buildings that brought them down," Udall could be quoted as saying — if one were to take him completely out of context, which the Insider report showed he had been.

By the end of the day, even conservative news outlets were ripping the attempted opposition research dump, which was given to the news outlet by a "conservative tipster," as bogus.

The Business Insider story made clear that Udall was simply repeating a question back to an audience member at the town hall he was holding. More than once, he dismissed the allegations. "I’ve seen nothing to suggests that there was that kind of pre-placed charges in the building," he said later in the more complete video.

Still, GOP officials clearly thought they had something. America Rising, a top Republican opposition research PAC, went up quickly with its own analysis titled: "3 Things A U.S. Senator Should Never Say About 9/11." Brad Dayspring, the communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, urged journalists to ask Udall about his alleged "lapse" into trutherism.

The National Republican Senatorial Commitee's spokesman Brad Dayspring appears to be chiefly responsible for this rather brazen attempt to put the words of "9/11 Truthers" into Sen. Mark Udall's mouth, spreading an edited video clip originally posted by the conservative America Rising PAC. This failed with considerable loss of face for Dayspring, as reporters and Democrats chided him for pushing a story that was debunked simply by watching the unedited video. At no time did Udall imply agreement with the questioner, and the words attributed to Udall were actually his repeating the question back to be sure he got it right.

Dayspring himself appears to have a dubious history, having resigned from the office of Rep. Eric Cantor after an "almost physical" altercation with another Cantor staffer. A search for Dayspring turns up lots of stories in which he's accused of wild fabrications and rebuked by fellow Republicans. He also apparently has a thing for "SexyTwitPics"–we suppose he's not alone there.

What Dayspring doesn't appear to have…is integrity. But that doesn't appear to be an impediment to continued employment.