Stench

Politico's Roger Simon wrote a column in which he claimed that Paul Ryan was referring to Mitt Romney as "Stench".

A lot of people - even a certain Nobel prize-winning economist-turned-pundit - took the claim to be true and pontificated about the story - and spread the story.

But, it wasn't true. Simon says it was intended as satire. Ann Althouse has an alternate explanation.

This was a deliberate attempt to pollute the public debate, to promote Simon's candidate. He would never fun with Obama like that. He kept his deniability, but he put it way down where no one would read. His writing doesn't merit the click to page 2.

Simon lobbed some stench
into his opponent's trench.

Another case of: "He who smelt it, dealt it."