NICHOLAS KAMM via Getty Images Members of Congress will blame President Donald Trump if he can’t use the bully pulpit to help them succeed with legislation.

WASHINGTON ― With the election of President Donald Trump and their long-awaited attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act finally at hand, Republicans find themselves facing peril of historic proportions.

Let’s call it their Jimmy Carter problem.

After the outsider peanut farmer-turned-politician from Georgia won the White House in 1976’s post-Watergate election, he took office with near historic majorities in both chambers of Congress ― 61 Democrats in the Senate and a 292 to 143 edge in the House.

Democrats had high hopes for the optimistic, famously toothy embodiment of the New South. What they got was underwhelming ― a leader who feuded with Congress, and scored some foreign policy successes, but never managed to pull off anything especially ambitious.

“He got some stuff through, but it was certainly not another Great Society,” said Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer, referring to achievements of former President Lyndon B. Johnson, who also presided over one-party government. “I think Democrats feel he wasted an opportunity that existed, and that helped open the door to the right.”

There were certainly economic and international crises beyond Carter’s control, but his failure to achieve big-ticket success paved the way for former President Ronald Reagan’s revolution from which liberals still haven’t entirely recovered.

Now, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and his fellow Republicans can see the historic writing on the wall with their own outsider reality-TV-star-turned-politician occupying the White House. It’s the first time since former President George W. Bush’s second election that the Republicans are starting a fresh four-year presidential term with unified control of government.

And they’ve got something big they want to do. Or, more accurately, that they want to undo. Their signature promise for the last six years has been to repeal Obamacare.

Even as the GOP proposal to deliver on that promise got “Ishtar” level pans from the left, right and experts, Ryan and many of his colleagues made clear this past week how vital they think it is to propel their deconstructive blueprint into law.

Ryan told reporters on Capitol Hill that repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act should come first, before the GOP can pursue any other cherished goals. He offered an especially stark explanation in a radio interview Friday with conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt.

“I do agree that this is momentum-killing,” the speaker said. “If we don’t do this and reduce or get rid of the trillion-dollar tax increases in Obamacare, that just puts tax reform a trillion dollars further out of our reach. So there’s a lot that rides on this, not to mention just the schedule.”

While Ryan cast it in practical terms, other Republicans were blunter, and recognized a global importance to their and Trump’s agenda in revoking former President Barack Obama’s signature achievement.

“This is so basic to what we have promised over the last few elections,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the second ranking Republican in the Senate. “I think if we fail to keep this promise then I think it makes the rest of our work much, much more difficult to accomplish.”

Failing to accomplish goals has electoral consequences. Historian Zelizer points to former President Bill Clinton’s first term, when he managed to boost taxes but failed utterly at health care reform, and the country answered with the Republican revolution of Newt Gingrich, who was speaker from 1995 to 1999.

A similar tale was told when Bush won his second term in 2004.