The story Goldstein and Eilperin tell is one not of GOP sabotage but of Obama administration self-sabotage. The geniuses who were sure they were capable of running the entire medical industry were so unnerved by the prospect of political opposition that at every stage of the way they undermined the president’s own signature “achievement.”

This is in part a story of political incompetence and hubris. Obama and his allies in Congress were unable to win a single Republican vote–and it doesn’t seem to have occurred to them that a monstrously complicated law enacted by a slender partisan minority might prove especially difficult to implement. As Obama himself admitted yesterday in a rare truthful statement: “Now, let’s face it, a lot of us didn’t realize that passing the law was the easy part.”

That’s what America gets for electing a president with charisma but no known skills apart (arguably) from delivering speeches.

We should note that this entire discussion has dealt only with the incompetent technical execution of ObamaCare, what we call Phase 1 of the disaster. Phases 2 and 3, respectively, are the exposure that ObamaCare is a massive consumer fraud and the economic inviability of the entire scheme.