Whenever the discussion about “rebranding” the Republican Party rolls around, the most frequent comment—whether in speeches or in the much-celebrated-then-derided autopsy of its November defeat—is that the G.O.P. has to change its means of communication, not its message.

If I may, then, I’d like to throw in a suggestion for how the G.O.P. can improve the way it speaks to voters: stop lying.

On Tuesday, House Speaker John Boehner sent out one of his myriad tweets about how the Republican Party plans to end the evils of Obama and usher in an era where sweets and flowers would be thrown at the feet of all Americans. (Oops, sorry . . . that was the G.O.P. fantasy about what would happen in Iraq. Oh well.) In his Tuesday tweet, Boehner continued the party’s endless and unsuccessful assault on Obamacare by trotting out a new canard to join the list that includes death panels and the government takeover of health care.

And this one may be the strangest yet: “ObamaCare even threatens mobile app developers & smartphone users.”

When I read that, my first thought was: “Really?” Then I remembered: this was a statement coming from a senior Republican about why Obamacare should be rejected. So my second thought was: “How did they come up with thisfalsehood?” After all, even the hoariest of lies about Obamacare is based—however loosely—on some twisted fact.

Boehner helpfully supplied a link to prove his point, which I guess was meant to convince people. After all, any reasonable person would likely assume that, if there is a link, Boehner can’t be making up this allegation out of whole cloth. Bad assumption—instead, it was a link to someone elsemaking it up out of whole cloth.

The first thing to jump out about the, shall we say, slipperiness of the allegation was the fact that the link was simply to his own press release, which in turn provided a link to another partisan press release, one from the House Energy and Commerce Committee. So Boehner was quoting his own team to make an allegation.

But even that release wasn’t willing to say that Obamacare “threatens” smartphones. And it wasn’t too hard to tell—just read the headline: “Will FDA Use Obamacare to Tax Americans’ Smartphones and Tablets?”

Catch the trick? Boehner took a questionbeing asked by one of his own and then turned it into a statement of fact in hopes of riling up the voters with a contemptible deception.

But it gets worse. Why even ask the question about whether Obamacare threatens app developers and smartphone users? Here’s the rationale put forth by Energy and Commerce:

The F.D.A. says an increasing number of mobile apps are being put out to monitor health problems, including chronic conditions like high-blood pressure and diabetes. Some of these apps are used in conjunction with medical devices that are already regulated by the F.D.A., or serve to give the phone the ability to act as such a device by using attachments, sensors, and other items. The F.D.A. has proposed regulating mobile apps when they transform a phone into the functional equivalent of a medical device.

And that’s it. If app makers want to create a program that transforms a phone into the functional equivalent of a medical device that is already regulatedby the F.D.A., then the agency has proposed that* *it might make sense to regulate them. I don’t know about you, but if my loved ones were using smartphones to check their high blood pressure, I sure would like somebodyto make sure the device wasn’t just churning out the local temperature in Albuquerque. That’s why devices that provide these functions are regulated in the first place; it’s a real brain teaser to figure out what would be so bad about the public wanting readings of critical medical information to be ensured correct, including at times when the device used for the test is a smartphone. But, in a letter to the F.D.A., the Republicans on Energy and Commerce whined that such regulations “could affect the innovation and growth in this market” because, you know, making sure medical devices work is bad for business, I guess.