Noonan on Ryan's Flop

COTTonLINE often finds The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan a voice of reason on matters political. Her column this week concerns the GOP's recent failure to repeal/replace Obamacare, see her distillation:

The central dynamic behind the bill’s difficulties is that the Republican conference in the House is divided between institutionalists, who support the leadership; conservatives, who found the bill too soft; and moderates, who found it too hard.

By putting forward the bill, they allowed this division—which was wholly predictable and may be irreconcilable—to play out as a public breakdown rather than an impasse. The president made a political mistake in throwing his lot with the leadership.

Stick a fork in him, Ryan is probably done. Boehner saw this coming and bailed out.