The two conservative candidates combined received 83 percent of the popular vote , while the progressive candidate received just 17 percent. Yet within a few short years, conservatism had been supplanted by Roosevelt liberalism.

A 2010 book titled The High Tide of American Conservatism recounts the 1924 election campaign in which two candidates, a Republican and a Democrat, ran as conservatives favoring limited government, individual freedom, and low taxes.

Republicans need to heed that lesson of history.

As Victor Davis Hanson said early this year, Trump's election has brought Republicans "more opportunity for conservative political change than any Republican candidate in a century," a one-time chance to "reverse the entire Obama project."

The quickest way for Republicans to squander this opportunity and lose their electoral majorities is to fail to stop the Obamacare wrecking ball that "destroys and bankrupts everything it touches." As Wayne Allen Root, writing at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, says, Obamacare is "the whole enchilada" of the Obama project.

Mr. Root's column is directed at Nevada Republican senator Dean Heller, who Root says "is in the process of destroying his own political career" with his opposition to the Senate health reform bill and is looking to become "One and Done Dean." Mr. Root's admonitions to Heller apply to all recalcitrant Republicans in the Obamacare repeal debate:

Can Heller do math? No matter what he does, nobody from today's radical, extremist Democrat Party will ever vote for him. Not one liberal student at UNLV. Not one Black Lives Matter protester. Not one illegal alien. Not one person on Medicaid. Not one feminist for Hillary. Not one Bernie Sanders nutcase. Not one MoveOn.org zombie. Democrats are laughing at Heller. They know he's doing their bidding ... single-handedly blocking the repeal of Obamacare ... killing President Trump agenda ... and perhaps destroying the GOP's chances of keeping Congress in 2018. Yet those same Democratic voters will try to throw him out office next year.

Democrats are laughing not just at Heller, but at any Republican dragging his feet on Obamacare repeal and perhaps destroying the GOP's chances of keeping its majorities in 2018.

Root goes on to predict that "the pain and misery of Obamacare" will cause Heller to "lose in a GOP primary to a doorknob":

The people who are being ripped off to pay the massive Obamacare bill are members of the GOP base. Dean Heller's base. Those are the people Heller just stabbed in the back. While the people Heller is "protecting" will never vote for him, no matter what he does for them.

The people being ripped off are not just Dean Heller's base, but the base of every Republican in Congress. Meanwhile, the people whom recalcitrant Republicans are supposedly protecting will never vote Republican, no matter what any Republican does for them.

In a follow-up column, Mr. Root urges Heller to "[d]o the math" on Obamacare:

In California, the Democrat Assembly leader is getting death threats because he tabled the idea of universal health care. Democrats are threatening to kill a Democrat because he realized there isn't enough money in the world to pay for free health care. ... But that was the point of Obamacare from Day One. To bankrupt the middle class and make us all welfare queens and wards of the state. Put everyone on Medicaid. Explode the rolls. Mission accomplished, Mr. Obama.

Will the legacy of this Republican Congress be "mission accomplished, Republicans," or "mission accomplished, Mr. Obama"?

Root again reminds Republicans:

Meanwhile the entire middle class and all small businesses are being slaughtered and bankrupted right under their noses. And no one says a word. ... Someone has to pay the bill. Surprise – it's their own middle-class base being ripped off. Now add in massive middle-class job losses. Obamacare has created a nation of low-wage, part-time jobs. Now add in $10 trillion in new debt over the past eight years to pay for this massive welfare state scam. The math is real and simple. Obamacare is a massive failure. It destroys and bankrupts whoever and whatever it touches. But mostly, it destroys your own GOP voters, Sen. Heller. Do the math.

It destroys your own GOP voters, Senate Republicans. Do the math.

Allowing Obamacare to continue to rip off their own GOP voters is the surest way to "one and done" for Republicans in 2018.

And as Shakespeare observes of "tides in the affairs of men" not taken, a Trump presidency subject to Democratic majorities would be "bound in shallows and in miseries."