The last-ditch attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act -- a promise eight years in the making for Republicans -- failed without even a floor vote . That failure ensures that, for the foreseeable future at least, Obamacare will remain the law of the land.

Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, a McConnell ally and someone Trump urged just 12 days ago to run for a third term, decided against the race -- and, in so doing, created a potential headache for his party in the 2018 midterms.

While Trump and McConnell suffered those indignities together, they each also had to deal with humiliations on their own over this three-day span.

Trump somehow managed to not only unite the NFL owners and players but also stoke racial tensions with a five-day long attack on professional athletes who protest during the national anthem. While he was distracted by his fight with the NFL, Trump also drew widespread criticism for his day-late-and-dollar-short handling of the devastation cause by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. And, oh yeah, special counsel Bob Mueller's investigation into Russia involvement in the 2016 election continued to pick up speed and widen its aperture

For McConnell, he must now grapple with what "Senator Roy Moore" could mean for his already-narrow majority. And deal with skittish incumbents up in 2018 worried that they will become the next Luther Strange. And deal with Trump who, according to CNN's White House team , is angry at McConnell for allegedly misleading him about Strange's chances of winning. (That may be the least surprising report of the year.) Then there's this final indignity: Outlets are reporting that Rick Pitino will be fired by the University of Louisville , McConnell's alma mater, later today.

Welcome to Washington 2017!

Consider that Trump and McConnell are, without question, the two most powerful Republicans in a Republican-dominated nation's capital. This should be the golden age for both men -- a time of unified Republican rule that should allow a series of conservative principles to flower.

To date, however, the lone major accomplishment of this Republican dominance is the appointment of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. That's not a small thing but for an administration and a GOP congressional leadership who expected health care reform and tax reform to be done (or almost done) by this point, it's a major disappointment.

And signs point to the road getting harder, not easier for McConnell and Trump. Tax reform, which Trump is expected to preview today in a speech in Indiana, will be no easy thing -- particularly given that a good chunk of the lobbying community in Washington is built around protecting this tax break or that one for a series of ultra-specialized industries. Plus, major -- and complex -- legislation is never as easy to move through Congress as people seem to think. Republicans need only look at their failed efforts on Obamacare to (re)learn that lesson.

Bannon will be emboldened by Moore's victory -- as will the grassroots army he kind-of, sort-of commands. While recreating Alabama won't be as easy as some think -- Moore had been kicking around Alabama conservative circles for a very long time -- there's no question that the movement to get rid of people like Roger Wicker (Mississippi) and Dean Heller (Nevada) has more energy today than it did yesterday.

Viewed at its most broad, what this week reflects is the relatively limited power of anyone -- up to and including the two leading Republicans in Washington -- to control the GOP right now.

While Trump rode the anti-Washington/anti-politician wave to the Republican primary nomination, he neither created it nor is able to command it. (If he was, Strange would have won -- not lost by a bigger margin than in the first vote back in August.)

In recent elections, McConnell appeared to have learned how to wrestle the activist party base to the ground following a series of damaging primary losses in 2010 and 2012. But, the rise of Moore -- and McConnell's unwillingness to spend the conservative firebrand into oblivion -- suggests that the distance between the GOP establishment and its base remains as wide as ever.

What's been made very clear this week is that Trump's election wasn't the end of the populist revolt within the GOP. It was only the beginning. And that this revolt doesn't have a leader to whom everyone in it listens. Or, if there is that leader, it's Bannon who has publicly warned the party establishment that his ultimate goal is to bring about their total destruction.

In short, this horrible week for Washington Republicans may turn out to be the rule, not the exception going forward into 2018.