New from the RNC. First watch the clip, then enjoy Hopenchange spokesman Ben LaBolt stooping to spin this lame:

“As Mayor Booker has said, the campaign did not reach out and ask him to record a video,” LaBolt told me. “Campaign officials also had not reached out directly to Mayor Booker yesterday [or Sunday], but he spoke with a DNC official who also did not ask him to record a video. He reaffirmed, as he has stated publicly, that he believed that a discussion of Mitt Romney’s private sector record is necessary given that he has made it the central premise of his candidacy but has falsely claimed that his goal was job creation, not profit maximization for himself and his partners.”

Booker specifically says in the vid that he talked with “campaign officials,” and Chuck Todd described “multiple conversations” because “the White House was simply upset.” How to reconcile all of this? One of three ways. One: LaBolt is lying, straight up. Two: So determined were they to keep the Unicorn Prince’s fingerprints off of this that they deliberately farmed out the task of reprimanding Booker to the DNC. Three: Booker did talk to campaign officials, but not until after LaBolt’s segment aired on CNN on Monday afternoon. That’s preposterous, of course — no one can seriously believe they let all of Sunday and most of Monday pass by without dialing him up — but I’m thinking maybe that’ll be LaBolt’s next move if people start snickering too loudly at this.

By the way, why exactly are he and the rest of Team O so intent to make it seem like they didn’t pressure Booker in the aftermath? We live in an age where both parties will leak actual talking-points memos to the media. No one is under any illusions about how the political process works, the best proof of which is that literally no one believes that Axelrod et al. didn’t lean on Booker privately, LaBolt’s adamant denials notwithstanding. They could just ‘fess up and spin it gently to suit Bambi’s image: “The president had a productive discussion with Mayor Booker about private equity and both agree that it’s a valued industry when it focuses on creating jobs” blah blah blah. No one’s going to care about this in a week. Why not just own it?