Republicans in Congress declared victory Tuesday after steamrolling President Trump on healthcare and forcing the White House to punt plans to repeal and replace Obamacare into 2021, after the 2020 elections.

After so often being forced to bend to Trump's will, congressional Republicans this time resisted implacably, and Trump folded.

Their jubilation could be short lived. The Affordable Care Act is guaranteed to become a top election-year issue on the heels of a midterm campaign that saw Republicans lose their House majority in spectacular fashion partly because voters rejected their drive to repeal former President Barack Obama’s healthcare law. Republicans now are sidestepping repeal and talking about aspects of Obamacare they support.

When the Trump administration last week decided to support a federal lawsuit to invalidate Obamacare and the president pushed Republicans in Congress to try and again to replace the law, there was a revolt. And the revolution prevailed.

[Related: Hill Republicans to White House on healthcare: You first]

Coverage protections for patients with pre-existing conditions, prohibitions on lifetime caps on insurance payouts, and the expansion of the Medicaid healthcare program for the poor are just a few of the benefits that have become quite popular and transformed public opinion of Obamacare. “Those are things nobody should be questioning and I certainly would always fight to protect,” Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., told the Washington Examiner.

Sen. John Cornyn, up for re-election next year, doesn't want to run on repealing and replacing Obamacare either. The Texas Republican emphasized that his campaign would pitch proposals to reduce healthcare costs using mechanisms built into the Affordable Care Act.

“I’m going to run my own campaign and have my own set of priorities,” Cornyn said.

At first, Republicans said they would not address the issue without a detailed plan from the White House. Then, on Monday afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., informed Trump during a telephone conversation that Republicans in his chamber would not consider comprehensive, repeal-and-replace healthcare legislation during this session of Congress, regardless of any blueprint submitted by the West Wing.

[Also read: New Republican bill would retain and retool Obamacare]

“I made it clear to him we were not going to be doing that in the Senate,” McConnell told reporters. “He later did say, as he tweeted, that he accepted that and that he would developing a plan that he would take to the American people during the 2020 campaign.”

A couple of hours after McConnell and Trump spoke, the president posted a short Twitter thread announcing that he was dropping plans to pursue and Obamacare repeal bill this year, although the court case is still lingering and might force the issue sooner than Election Day.

“Vote will be taken right after the Election when Republicans hold the Senate and win back the House,” Trump tweeted.

Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., a staunch Trump ally, argued that the president didn’t back down in the face of GOP opposition to his healthcare plans. He blamed the change in power in the House, although Republicans failed to replace Obamacare during the previous two years when they ran both chambers of Congress.

“I think it’s acknowledging the fact that there’s Democrats that control the House and any particular healthcare solution that would be supported by the GOP conference is not going to make it through this House,” Meadows said.

[Opinion: Trump's Obamacare problem: Republicans have already fooled the people too many times]