The day after the Republicans’ second primary debate in 2015, at the Reagan Library, before the debates became completely cartoonish, a shocked New York Times editorial called it a collection of assertions so untrue, so bizarre, that they form a vision as surreal as the Ronald Reagan jet looming behind the candidates’ lecterns. It felt at times as if the speakers were no longer living in a fact-based world where actions have consequences, programs take money and money has to come from somewhere. Where basic laws—like physics and the Constitution—constrain wishes. Where Congress and the public,
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