Who is talking about lax? You can set rules for what you will allow and then have the market find solutions that can live up to that. Nothing lax or picking winners about that.

Any regulation will necessary create winners and losers. After all, it's purpose is to put limits on spheres of human activity that were presumably occurring. Otherwise, one wouldn't need to regulate them. Coal plants will and should be losers under any reasonable regime.

As a result of the regulation yes of course, which is a very different thing than deciding what needs to win which is what is happening right now and why EPA is getting some criticism.

Coal should and will lose once there is a cheaper, cleaner, more reliable and more effective solution out there. Just like coal replaced the burning of trees and made it possible to provide energy from outside instead of people having to use a fireplace inside their homes (which was very unhealthy).

There actually are better solutions than coal one is nuclear yet an absurd amount of pushback from environmental organizations and too many politicians have kept coal around because of their unsubstantiated fearmongering. Another is shale gas which has reduced the CO2 of the US substantially but despite that is also getting a lot of pushback from environmental organizations and politicians

Neither wind nor solar can provide enough energy at scale and at a realistic price for the US let alone for the entire world yet that is what is being forced rather than the much better alternatives.