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House Republicans pulled their health-care bill shortly before a vote on Friday, and for once the media dirge is right about a GOP defeat. This is a major blow to the Trump Presidency, the GOP majority in Congress, and especially to the cause of reforming and limiting government. (3/24)

What politicians, those hardy folk, don’t understand about health care is how anxious it makes their constituents. Not suspicious, not obstinate, but anxious. Because unlike such policy questions as tax reform, health care can be an immediate life-or-death issue for you. It has to do with whether, when, and where you can get the chemo if you’re sick, and how long they’ll let you stay in the hospital when you have nobody, or nobody reliable and nearby, to care for you. To make it worse, the issue is all hopelessly complicated and complex and pits you as an individual against huge institutions—the insurance company that doesn’t answer the phone, the hospital that says “I’m afraid that’s not covered”—and you have to make the right decisions. (Peggy Noonan, 3/24)

If President Trump and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) had paid attention to Mitt Romney, they could have avoided the fiasco of their now dead and unmourned health-care bill. They would not now face a situation in which both of them are being blamed because they both deserve to be. And the Republican Party would not be engulfed in a festival of recriminations. (E.J. Dionne Jr., 3/26)

Give Donald Trump this: His travel ban enraged only half the country. The House Republicans’ attempt to replace the Affordable Care Act, meanwhile, has alienated everyone, including members of the Republican Party itself. The bill was supposed to go to a vote on Friday, but the leadership, facing a likely defeat, was forced to pull it when it became clear it didn’t have the necessary support. It was perhaps better off dead: Already a rushed, Rube Goldberg solution in search of a problem, by the time it neared the House floor it had so many compromises woven into it to win votes that, even if it passed, it would have probably gone down in defeat in the Senate. (Corey Robin, 3/24)

The jaw-dropping spectacle in which their party holds the White House and majorities in both houses of Congress and yet failed on its first, and arguably most significant, agenda item should disabuse Republicans of a number their deeply held, inaccurate beliefs. (Jennifer Rubin, 3/26)

The plan to replace Obamacare with a new bill crafted by House Speaker Paul Ryan has failed, and embarrassingly so. And that failure is part and parcel of a larger failure of the Republican-led Congress to push an agenda in the new administration. (Glenn Harlan Reynolds, 3/26)

We should pause and realize what a big deal this is. The number one agenda item for years, the one that most House Republicans campaigned on when first elected, and they couldn't manage to even get an initial bill out of the House. Not only that, but it was clear this week that even though most of them were willing to vote for it, practically no one was enthusiastic about what they had produced. It also polled terribly, and conservative health care wonks hated the bill. (Jonathan Bernstein, 3/24)

Having recently learned that healthcare is complicated, President Trump has now discovered that legislating is complicated too. Trump's attempt to force a half-baked bill to "repeal and replace" Obamacare down the throats of reluctant House Republicans failed, as House leaders were simply unable to satisfy the conflicting demands from the two wings of their party. In the end, it wasn't a case of savvy dealmakers coming up with an offer that buyers couldn't refuse; it was a case of buyers looking at the offer and saying, “No thanks.” (3/24)

One can always count on this feature in the aftermath of any great event that has taken place behind closed doors: the journalistic “inside story.” It’s known in the trade as a “tick-tock.” And the implosion of the House Republicans’ Obamacare repeal bill has thrown off its fair share of examples, notably in the New York Times, Politico, the Washington Post and at CNN. They’re full of scenes of heightened drama from the last week, all described in cinematic detail, replete with the interior monologues of participants at the White House, the Capitol and other locations around town. (Michael Hiltzik, 3/26)