As the prospect of a loss became more real on Friday, the frustrations of GOP lawmakers loyal to the leadership began to boil over. “I’ve been in this job eight years, and I’m wracking my brain to think of one thing our party has done that’s been something positive, that’s been something other than stopping something else from happening,” Representative Tom Rooney of Florida said in an interview. “We need to start having victories as a party. And if we can’t, then it’s hard to justify why we should be back here.”

Nothing has exemplified the party’s governing challenge quite like health care. For years, Republican leaders resisted pressure from Democrats and rank-and-file lawmakers to coalesce around a detailed legislative alternative to Obamacare. That failure didn’t prevent them from attaining power, but it forced them to start nearly from scratch after Trump’s surprising victory in November. At Ryan’s urging, the party had compiled a plan as part of the speaker’s “A Better Way” campaign agenda. Translating that into legislation, however, proved a much stiffer challenge; committee leaders needed to navigate a razor’s edge to satisfy conservatives demanding a full repeal of Obamacare and satisfy moderates who preferred to keep in place its more popular consumer protections and Medicaid expansion. They were further limited by the procedural rules of the Senate, which circumscribed how far Republicans could go while still avoiding a Democratic filibuster.

The legislation Republicans came up with would have eliminated Obamacare’s insurance mandates and most of its tax increases, but it left in place many of the consumer protections that the public broadly supported. Conservatives were unhappy that the proposal did not immediately end the law’s Medicaid expansion or scrap all of its regulations, while moderates worried that the bill ultimately would leave too many of their constituents uninsured or facing higher costs than they do under the current system.

Both Trump and Ryan characterized Obamacare as a law in collapse, even as they acknowledged Republicans now were powerless to repeal it. But despite the challenges it still faces, Democrats rejoiced at an unexpected reprieve for an achievement that appeared to be doomed a few months ago. “Today is a great day for our country. It’s a victory,” declared Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader who steered the Affordable Care Act to passage seven years ago this month. Hillary Clinton cheered the news on Twitter. “Today was a victory for the 24,000,000 people at risk of losing their health insurance, for seniors, for families battling the quiet epidemic of addiction, for new moms and women everywhere,” she said. “Most of all, it’s a victory for anyone who believes affordable health care is a human right.”

With the leadership’s plan dead, Republicans said they would try to move on to other issues. But the party’s failure on health care will sting, and it will linger. On Friday, Ryan was asked what GOP lawmakers should say to their constituents after promising them for so long they would repeal and replace Obamacare. The speaker was stumped. “That’s a good question,” he replied. “I wish I had a better answer for you.”

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