Amazing. We’ve actually reached the point in the slow motion train wreck called the Republican Party at which a presidential candidate simply lies outright about President Obama — and when called on it, he openly admits he lied and boasts that it was a success: Team Romney Crows About That Obama Ad: ‘It Worked’.

The offending moment comes when Obama says “if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” That was a quote from a way-too-honest McCain adviser that Obama loved to repeat on the trail. By evening, the ad had been attacked, derided, parodied, and ruled “pants on fire” worthy by Politifact. The Romney campaign could have cared less.

“We want to engage the president,” explained Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom in the spin room. “We look at him as our rival. It’s all deliberate; it was all very intentional.”

Romney adviser Ron Kaufman, an RNC committee member and longtime operative, simply said that the ad “worked.”

“They always squeal the most when you hold a mirror up to them,” he said, “and they overreacted, clearly. All they did was make the ad more effective.”

“There was a time when the Obama campaign had real discipline,” joked Stuart Stevens, a senior Romney strategist. “Today was a total meltdown. You had the press secretary to the president of the United States talking about an ad that was running on one station in New Hampshire. There was a time when Jay [Carney, a former reporter for Time] wouldn’t even have written about this. Total meltdown. It’s as if you have somebody on a witness stand, accused of anger management issues, and he jumps off the stand and comes after you.”

Utter moral bankruptcy, driven by a ferocious lust for power.