At this point it’s obvious that the Romney campaign has made a strategic decision to completely abandon even the pretense of being truthful about President Obama. They’re going for broke — telling outright, easily debunked lies, deceptively editing videos to change the meaning of Obama’s words, and refusing to back down or even acknowledge it when called out.

And the new ad from the Romney campaign is yet another example. The basis of the advertisement, that Obama dropped the work requirement from welfare laws, is a flat out lie.

Steve Benen has the facts behind this utterly dishonest advertisement: The Scandal Behind Romney’s New Attack Ad.

For those who can’t watch clips online, the ad shows President Clinton signing welfare reform into law in 1996, “requiring work for welfare.” The spot then argues, however, that President Obama “quietly announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements.” The voiceover tells viewers, “Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check…. and welfare to work goes back to being plain old welfare.”

We then learn, “Mitt Romney will restore the work requirement because it works.”

Romney’s lying. He’s not spinning the truth to his advantage; he’s not hiding in a gray area between fact and fiction; he’s just lying. The law hasn’t been “gutted”; the work requirement hasn’t been “dropped.” Stations that air this ad are disseminating an obvious, demonstrable lie.

All Obama did is agree to Republican governors’ request for flexibility. That’s it. Indeed, perhaps the most jaw-dropping aspect of this is that Romney himself, during his one gubernatorial term, asked for the same kind of flexibility on welfare law that Obama agreed to last month. Romney, in other words, is attacking the president for doing what Romney asked the executive branch to do in 2005.

The entire line of attack is simply insane.