The Republican Party has spent the majority of the Trump presidency at odds with itself. Despite majorities in Congress and control of The White House—albeit by a man whose sense of the bully pulpit doesn't extend very far beyond Twitter—the party has come up empty-handed on marquee initiatives. Nearly every regulatory agency is being eaten from the inside out by industry crony appointees, but this "regulatory capture," as it's called, is the bare minimum that the barons of the GOP expect. In late-June, during a massive weekend retreat between Republican politicians and donors, public officials were told that their reelection piggybanks may get skinnier if progress wasn't made. From The Guardian:

In between meetings, Dave Brat, a Virginia Republican representative, predicted dire consequences in next year’s midterm elections should his party fail to deliver on its repeated promises. “If we don’t get healthcare, none of us are coming back,” he said in a brief interview. “We said for seven years you’re gonna repeal Obamacare. It’s nowhere near repealed.” It’s the same for tax reform, Brat said: “We don’t get taxes through, we’re all going home. Pack the bags.”

Healthcare came up short largely due to a propagandized agenda at odds with both reality and underlying public opinion. It takes an awfully complex strategy to pass insurance reforms that, by every objective measure, would make the vast majority of Americans more vulnerable. (See Paul Ryan's very bad PowerPoint presentation.) Ryan, McConnell, & Co. failed to meet the crucial September 30th due date for repeal-and-replace, but there's a possibility of a zombie bill down the road if the budgetary circumstances present themselves.

With all the trick plays on healthcare resulting in fumbles, Republicans are going back to basics: tax cuts.

Putting aside the poker-faced lie by Trump economic advisor Gary Cohn that the wealthy won't get a tax cut, and putting aside the highly questionable relationship Republicans like to cite between tax cuts and broad-based growth, there's the unquestionable fact that cutting taxes strips government of revenue and causes deficits to balloon.

If you've been a sentient civic being for the past decade, then surely you're aware of the GOP's unrelenting obstruction of the Obama agenda, based on what they said was a deep, genuine, heartfelt concern for the rising debt. Washington bureaucrats irresponsibly "spend money today and send the bill to our children and grandchildren," the worn line goes. Deficit hawks, they call themselves, implying seriousness and principled singularity. And the press has, for years, fallen hook, line, and sinker for it.

But now, as tax reform rollout begins, leading Republicans are starting to give up the charade, in official statements to reporters:

It's another odd twist in the post-fact era; the appearance of telling the truth matters so little that politicians are openly admitting their lies.