Before Republicans had even seen the bill, Luntz picked the lie, and urged GOP officials to repeat it, even if it didn't make any sense. Mike Pence is making clear that Republicans found this advice compelling.
What's more, Matt Yglesias thinks it's a strategy that will likely prove to be effective.
The overwhelming evidence is that the media gets bored with these fact checks very quickly and that if you just put your head down and charge forward, you come out a couple of weeks later back into "he said, she said" territory. The only real test for whether or not lying works is whether or not you can bring your ideological fellow-travelers along. Will Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck echo your line? Will the Weekly Standard and National Review? Will the bulk of your legislative caucus? The answers are yes, yes, and yes.
Which, in a nutshell, is why our political discourse can be so mind-numbing -- Republicans believe they have an incentive to lie with impunity.
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