If we rewind the tape (mentally insert the high-pitched whir of rewinding tape), we will recall that liberals’ long-ago problem was that they were simply irresponsible with numbers. Start a program without considering costs and worry about them later, if ever.

This was declared unacceptable, so the New Democrats arrived with shirt-pockets full of slide-rules and spreadsheets and cross-tabs and they set to work gathering data, making projections and lashing themselves to the mast anchored in the bottom line.

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Why was Obamacare so complicated? This is one reason. It had to all add up. Did they get it perfect? No, but reasonably close.

But close, as they say, only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades and Democrats. For Republicans, you can close your eyes and throw your horseshoe or hand grenade as hard as you want in any direction and you still get a point no matter where it lands. The Republican-Air Healthcare Plan is missing the meaningful numbers and they don’t care, either. Far enough is close enough for them.

The larger context in which to understand this is that the rules are there only insofar as they can be used against liberals. Rewind the tape again. Think all the way back to the 2016 campaign. Remember Exhibit A against Hillary Clinton? That’s right, that she was loose with the facts. Imagine! There was no room in American politics for someone who was not ever-so-scrupulous with every t-cross and i-dot.

That too was an ironclad rule, vital to the polity, until it wasn’t. Now in our take-Trump-seriously-but-not-literally world, the rules, like the truth, disappear into the shiny new swamp of alternative facts.