Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it is said. And in Washington, so is stealing credit.

Is there a better example than Republican lawmakers praising themselves for “saving” the federal health care law that they fought long and hard to defeat, repeal and otherwise sabotage?

Now we can count both former President Donald Trump and his GOP running mate and ideological “Mini-Me,” Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, in that number.

You don’t have to be a TV network fact-checker to know that Trump and Vance are telling whoppers about the Republican record on health care reform.

You need only to have been mildly sentient during Trump’s presidency.

For example, during the vice presidential debate with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Vance proudly claimed that Trump “salvaged” the Affordable Care Act, informally known as “Obamacare,” and tried to improve it during his time in office.

“When Obamacare was crushing under the weight of its own regulatory burden and health care costs, Donald Trump could have destroyed the program,” Vance said. “Instead, he worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that Americans had access to affordable care.”

Oh, please. Whatever the Trump administration may have done to “save” the ACA came after repeated attempts to kill it.

On his very first day as president, Trump eagerly signed an executive order to repeal the government-funded Obamacare.

That made for a suitable photo op but had little impact in real life on the complicated behemoth of government health care.

Many of us who care about this important issue recall how vigorously Trump worked his signature pen to weaken Obamacare marketplaces, cut spending for advertising and enrollment assistance, and channel funds to different priorities — such as funding videos and social media messaging criticizing the ACA — to please conservatives.

As it happened, despite widespread public skepticism about the ACA, inspired in no small part by the vigorous efforts of Republicans to trash it, once the law was enacted, millions of uninsured Americans gained access to real health care, and the program’s popularity grew.

Republicans now recognize it for the third rail that it is on Capitol Hill: Touch it, and you die.

So we have Trump to thank for the success of Obamacare?

I can only imagine the mental gymnastics that it took for Vance, a highly intelligent and educated person, to convince himself of that proposition, or at least to pretend he believed it.

Mark it down to chutzpah, if you like, but there was a different lie, a much more serious lie, that Vance could not bring himself to enunciate.

For most of the night, the more polished and media savvy Vance seemed to be winning the debate, in my view. But when Walz challenged him to say who won the 2020 election, Vance’s discomfort with his running mate’s growing web of half-truths, fabrications and outright lies seemed to show itself.

As simple as the question “Who won the 2020 election?” might be to answer in most galaxies, in MAGA world, it is the defining issue, the shibboleth that separates the true Trump believers from the perfidious RINOs — Republicans in name only.

Vance, a rising star in that world, refused to give a direct answer.

Reeled back toward the question at hand, he tried another dodge. He wanted to answer a question he asked himself about whether Kamala Harris censored Americans from speaking their minds in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

No dice. Walz then cut in with one of his most aggressive attack lines of the evening: “That is a damning nonanswer.”

Indeed, having dug himself into a hole, Vance figuratively pulled dirt in on top of himself: He declined to rule out challenging the outcome of the 2024 race, a mission Trump tried unsuccessfully to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to complete.

Now Pence is widely praised for having done the right thing on Jan. 6, 2021. With our constitutional system at stake, he would not lie for Trump.

That’s integrity young JD should learn from and emulate, if he can.

The writer is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.