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By Olivier Douliery/Getty Images.

For Paul Ryans conservative antagonists, the slow-motion collapse of the House Republican health-care bill was greeted with an outpouring of schadenfreude, if not outright celebration. Breitbart, the alt-right media organ formerly run by White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, a longtime critic of the House Speaker, was practically feverish. RYAN YANKS BILL; NOT ENOUGH VOTES, blared the top headline on Breitbarts home page on Friday afternoon. Surrounding the bright orange text were a half-dozen more articles that left no doubt who should be blamed after the White House and Republican leadership failed to whip enough votes for the unloved bill, which the House Freedom Caucus had refused to support. REPORT: BANNON SAYS BILL WRITTEN BY INSURANCE INDUSTRY, read one headline, followed by another citing Rep. Mo Brooks calling Ryancare a form of Republican welfare and one of the worst bills ever. Matt Drudge, the iconoclastic proprietor of the conservative news aggregator The Drudge Report, who had highlighted stories blaming Ryan for the bills troubles in the days leading up to the vote, led his own front page with a photograph of the Hindenburg explosion. The headline: REPUBLICAN CATASTROPHE.

At the end, most of the blame will fall on Ryan.

Donald Trump, himself, was careful not to fault Ryan publicly in the wake of the bills failure. I dont blame him for a thing, I really dont, the president told The New York Times in a phone interview just minutes after the legislative effort was unceremoniously aborted. Im not disappointed, he insisted, explaining that he was eager to move on to other things. He also accused Democrats of sabotaging his effort to repeal Obamacare, despite the fact that the Republican Party controls both houses of Congress.

But behind closed doors, the newly-elected president fumed, the Times reports. After retreating to the White House on Friday night, Trump repeatedly asked advisers who should take the fall. Some pointed the finger at White House chief of staff Reince Priebus. Others said they regretted allowing Ryan to draft the bill, suggesting it was a mistake to make health-care reformon which Republicans have never agreedhis first legislative effort. According to the Times, Trumps team was privately stunned by Mr. Ryans inability to master the politics of his own conference.

So far, Republicans are publicly casting blame in all directions. The bulk of Republicans will probably say its a combination of Trump and Ryan, one G.O.P. strategist told me. But I think at the end, most of the blame will fall on Ryan.

Outside the White House, Ryans longtime enemies were not hiding the fact that the long knives are out. Breitbart political editor Matthew Boyle was the first to report on Friday that members of Congress are considering a plan to replace Ryan as House Speaker, and that a source close to Trump had said the president was skeptical of Ryan. This is another example of the staff not serving the president well and the weakness of the Paul Ryan speakership, the source told Breitbart. Judson Phillips, a prominent Tea Party leader, called the debacle the worst disaster for a majority party since the Democrats tried to push Hillarycare. Milo Yiannopolous, the popular alt-right provocateur who was recently ousted from Breitbart, wrote simply, Ryancare is finished.

Trump, however, isnt done with Ryan. Sources told me that Ryans power has been vastly diminished after burning his political capital on health care, leaving him weakened going forward. But the president still needs the House Speaker as Republicans move on to the next big item on their legislative agenda: comprehensive tax reform, which Wall Street is betting on to lower corporate rates and streamline the tax code. And if theres anyone who can spin a political debacle to his advantage, it is Trump. He, of all people, has had failures and setbacks throughout his career, former Trump campaign surrogate Jeffrey Lord told me, noting that Trump had published a companion book to The Art of the Deal titled The Art of the Comeback. So what he does is acknowledge the setback, and then what he does is go about finding a way to get whatever the setback is, overcome.

That comeback begins with Trump stepping back and allowing others to fall under the bus, even if hes not the one doing the pushing. The Congress takes the blame, but the leadershipnot for nothing, the word leader is in there, Lord said. Breitbart editor-at-large Joel Pollak made much the same point in an op-ed Friday, asserting that Trump would not only recover easily from his most recent scandal, but that he had acted strategically to humiliate the Republican establishment. [H]e let them make the first moveand he exposed two things about them, wrote Pollak. First, that they had not come up with a plan that was ready for prime time; second, that they had not done any of the political legwork necessary to sell their plan to voters. The myth of Trump as three-dimensional chess master lives on.

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The Alt-Right Dances on Paul Ryan's Grave - Vanity Fair