Well, that was quick. In less than 24 hours, Mitch McConnell's "repeal and replace Obamacare" bill went down in flames, and then his hastily-constructed Plan C -- the "repeal and delay" idea -- also went down in flames, in spectacular fashion. Without an obvious Plan D on the horizon, this most likely means that the GOP push to repeal Obama's signature legislation is now completely dead in the water, hopefully from now all the way until after the 2018 midterm elections. The finger-pointing among Republicans has already begun, and will likely continue throughout the August congressional break. The real culprit here, though, is nothing short of Republican incompetence. They can spin it all they want, but they're still going to look like the gang who couldn't shoot straight to a significant portion of their own base.

If Republicans had had their act together, then President Trump would have signed a repeal and replace bill months ago. There's plenty of incompetence to spread around here, starting with the man at the top. Trump overpromised on a multitude of subjects while campaigning, but none so more than healthcare. He swore up and down that he and he alone knew exactly what to do. He would present his magic plan to Congress, Republicans would joyfully pass it, and everyone's lives would get immeasurably better in the blink of an eye. He promised health insurance for everyone, at a cheaper price, with better results and happier consumers. He vowed not to touch Medicare and Medicaid (and Social Security, to boot). He would make everyone happy and healthy with his grand plan.

That, of course, didn't happen. Trump had no plan. He didn't even have the bare bones of a plan. He lied to the voters, plain and simple. The most revealing statement he's made so far was to admit, a few months back, that healthcare reform was "complicated" -- who knew? This was an admission that he had no idea what to do about it, and indeed never had.

That might have been forgivable if Trump had then dug into the subject and made the deals necessary to get something through Congress. If he had spent a lot of time boning up on the issues and getting advice from various advisors about the pros and cons of all the ideas, then he could have actually fulfilled the cardboard image he has always portrayed himself to be: the king of the dealmakers. But, alas, Trump couldn't be bothered. He couldn't even be bothered after the fact -- he held a victory celebration over the House passing their bill, and then within weeks was calling it too "mean." When GOP senators met with Trump, they were astonished that he had absolutely no idea and no curiosity about any of the details of the bill they were working on. The White House wasn't weighing in on this side of any argument or the other side, Trump just flat-out did not even know what the basic arguments were about. He just wanted a win -- he wanted a piece of paper on his desk that he could sign, and he did not care in the slightest what was written on it. In real estate terms, it was as if Trump tried to cut a deal on a property while not even knowing what ZIP code it was in, not knowing what the building even looked like, and without any understanding of its marketplace value. Con men selling Florida swampland would have been more legitimate dealmakers than Trump, in this regard.

Trump's last-minute effort to reach out and pull the bill over the finish line in the Senate was the final proof of his absolute incompetence. He invited seven GOP senators to dinner last night. None of them were even on the fence. They were all solid "yes" votes. He spent his valuable time trying to convince people who did not need convincing. Right as the dinner ended, two other Republican senators simultaneously tweeted they would vote "no." Trump was caught totally unprepared. He's now trying to spin it all as some sort of victory (no, really), because he didn't lose more than four votes. Even this is completely divorced from reality, since the C.B.O. score hadn't been published, which likely would have been the trigger for more Republicans to announce they were voting against the bill. Trump is also -- bizarrely -- trying to blame Democrats, not even understanding at this late date that Republicans only needed 50 GOP votes to pass the bill.

Of course, Trump isn't the only Republican who is about to get a boatload of blame. Mitch McConnell has been spoken of in the past few weeks as some sort of legislative genius on par with Lyndon B. Johnson in the Senate. This, obviously, just isn't true. What, after all, has Mitch accomplished during the crucial first six months of the Trump administration? He changed the rules and got a Supreme Court justice confirmed. That's pretty much it. So where, exactly, is all the genius?

McConnell tried a maneuver more fitting to the House, and it spectacularly backfired on him. He tried to jam a bill down the throat of his own caucus, and they refused to be bullied. Strikingly, one of the two "no" votes that doomed the bill came from Jerry Moran, who usually supports the GOP Senate leadership. His big complaint was with the process itself. This is nothing short of open rebellion against McConnell trying such heavyhanded tactics ever again. In the House, the speaker can manhandle his own membership, but this just doesn't work well in the Senate, much to Mitch's dismay.

The real blame for this legislative fiasco lies at the heart of the Republican Party, though. They had more than seven years to come up with their own "more conservative" plan, get the entire party behind it, and promote it as a better alternative. They utterly failed to do so, perhaps because doing so was impossible due to Obamacare's conservative origins (see: Romneycare, the Heritage Foundation). They spent all their time instead on passing meaningless "veto bait" bills to completely repeal Obamacare. They didn't have to worry about what to replace it with, because doing so would have meant making hard political choices and then defending those choices to the voters. Why bother, when the bill's just going to be vetoed anyway? And then, by their own admission, Republicans just never expected Trump to win. They thought they'd have another four years of meaningless grandstanding instead of having to actually come up with their own ideas and formulate their own plan.

This led to the creation of a piece of legislation that no Republican could adequately champion when talking to their voters. Approval for the bills hit record lows, sometimes falling below 20 percent. All of a sudden it wasn't just some partisan game with grand gestures, what Republicans were doing would have immediate and critical effects on millions of voters. Who weren't exactly shy about voicing their displeasure. The realization of how disastrous these effects would be caused some Republicans to rethink their support, plain and simple. Getting re-elected without repealing Obamacare might be a tough sell to the Republican base, but getting re-elected after destroying the healthcare industry wholesale probably would have been impossible for many.

So we should all be very thankful for the rampant Republican incompetence. It is rather surprising, because Republicans (at least, when they're the "out" party) have a proven track record of being very loyal and regularly voting as a solid bloc. But being the party in control of both houses of Congress and the White House means actually having to govern. When your votes have real-world effects rather than just a meaningless move in the grand political game, it does tend to focus your attention in new ways.

What is the most astonishing result of Mitch McConnell's spectacular failure is hearing Republicans admit that there are many parts of Obamacare worth preserving. And that the next step should now be what it really should have been from the beginning: sitting down in a good-faith effort with Democrats to solve the actual problems which do exist, rather than solving "problems" which do not (such as massive tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy, for instance). When all else fails, in other words, maybe it's time to read the instructions. In this case, that would mean the Senate holding hearings where interested parties (doctors' groups, hospitals, insurance companies, patients, etc.) can be heard. It would mean avoiding deal-breaking language and ideas (such as "repeal Obamacare"). It would mean making an honest effort to better the lives of actual constituents, rather than concentrating so fiercely on partisanship and ideology.

The chances of success for such an effort are, at this point, unknowable. If Republicans get too caught up in the blame game, then they'll become politically paralyzed. If they decide to do nothing but point the finger of shame at each other, then no consensus will be possible among them on all sorts of issues. Even if the Senate (where there are some sane Republicans left) were to hammer out a bipartisan agreement on healthcare reform with Democrats, it's tough to predict the chances that the House would even hold a vote on it. So the future's still uncertain, but at this point it does look like Republican incompetence has saved them from going down the most destructive of paths. For that, at least, we can all now be thankful.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant