Republicans spent more than seven years seeking unified control of government based on a promise to swing the pendulum of the American health care system in a more conservative direction. How they intended to accomplish this was never clear. When asked during that period of time to assess their progress, Republican leaders would insist an Affordable Care Act alternative was nearly complete, in the final stages of negotiations, and then they’d let the issue drop until another inquisitor broached the subject again.

In 2016, Republicans were awarded the power they sought. Their unexpected victory made it impossible for them to coyly promise a #BetterWay to structure the health care system, without ever saying how. It forced them, at last, to lay their cards on the table.

The legislation House Republicans introduced Monday, after weeks of internal struggle and secretive negotiations, suggests (as most liberals assumed) that they were never close to consensus at all. It has outraged right-wing pressure groups and baffled conservative health care experts. Health insurance consultant Bob Laszewski called the proposal “mind boggling.”

Libertarian writer Peter Suderman rightly wonders about the purpose of this crueler, less coherent, but still ideologically impure version of the Affordable Care Act. “In general, it’s not clear what problems this particular bill would actually solve,” he wrote at Reason, later noting, “It doesn’t go far enough for conservatives, but may not be generous enough to appease more moderate Republicans either.”

Laszewski suggests the answer must lie in the congressional budget process, outside of which repealing and replacing Obamacare would be subject to filibuster, but where the rules prohibit changing provisions of law that have little or no impact on federal deficits. “Anything else would require a bipartisan compromise with the Democrats,” he wrote. That answer explains why certain Republican nostrums (like allowing the interstate sale of health plans) don’t appear in the bill. But that doesn’t go nearly all the way toward explaining why Republicans have hitched themselves to an unsupportable, politically ruinous mess.

