The implosion of the GOP's all-or-nothing assault on Obamacare might have started on Election Night 2010. Republicans thought they had been validated in their relentless attacks on the law, swept to huge victories in the House. Four years ago, it seemed unthinkable that they would ever waver.

As recently as last fall, conservatives felt as confident as they'd ever been when the federal health insurance exchange HealthCare.gov failed miserably in its first days. It reinvigorated their faith in fighting the law after the U.S. Supreme Court and 2012 presidential election dealt that thinking a serious blow.

But since the heady days of cancelled policies and a balky website, the political viability of absolutist repeal has been on a downward spiral. It was probably a decline made inevitable when President Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney in 2012, which ensured that repeal would at least be vetoed for another four years. But that decline has been slow enough that it can be difficult to detect.

Even though Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who fancies himself to be a thought leader in the party, still tweets #FullRepeal with regularity, he's become an increasingly lonely voice. The use of Obamacare as an effective Republican attack looks almost at its end. It's been a long time coming.

"It really is extraordinary in a lot of ways. Republicans were absolutely convinced that the antipathy toward the ACA would be the ticket to victory," Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, told TPM. "Now they still may have a ticket to victory, but it's not going to be that."

Ornstein called the GOP's singular focus on attacking Obamacare -- and inability to foresee that it would eventually collapse on them -- "a textbook case of mass psychology."

"They basically worked themselves up into a frenzy over the notion that this was a government takeover of health care and socialism," he said. "I think they convinced themselves that this was so awful, that they denied any objective reality."

Jurors could begin deliberating as early as Friday in the federal corruption case against Virginia ex-Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) and his wife Maureen. Over five weeks of testimony, jurors have heard a barrage of details about the McDonnells’ finances and about their interactions with a wealthy Virginia businessman, Jonnie Williams, from whom the couple is accused of taking $177,000 worth of gifts and loans in exchange for lending the credibility of the governor’s office to Williams’ dietary supplements company.

But without a doubt, the most engrossing aspect of the trial has been the revelations about the McDonnells’ marriage. In testimony, the governor painted a picture of his marriage veering so far into soap opera territory that pundits began referring to it as the “crazy wife” defense. Legal experts told TPM that was an unprecedented strategy to deploy in such a high-profile criminal case.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) erred when trying to name the criminal charges he's facing during his recent visit to New Hampshire ahead of a potential 2016 presidential bid.

Fresh off his win in Alaska's Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Alaska, former state Attorney General Dan Sullivan on Tuesday released a new ad in which he shoots a TV.

Sen. Marco Rubio wants to use a must-pass spending bill to go after President Barack Obama's planned executive action on immigration, a risky strategy that could spark a government shutdown battle just one month before the election.

Updated: 10:25 AM

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) explained his plan to use a government shutdown as a bargaining chip against President Barack Obama to a room full of wealthy conservatives two months ago, according to audio obtained by The Nation magazine.

As of Wednesday morning, the Republican primary for Arizona's 1st Congressional District was too close to call, with Arizona House Speaker Andy Tobin barely leading oilman Gary Kiehne and state Rep. Adam Kwasman trailing the two other candidates in the primary.

The word out of the British press this week is that U.K. intelligence officials have identified a British citizen who had started his career as a hip-hop artist as the masked man who killed American journalist James Foley in a video released last week.

Almost immediately after the video purporting to show Foley's beheading was released by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria last week, experts noted that the executioner seemed to speak with a British accent. U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said Thursday it was "increasingly likely" that the killer was a British citizen. An unnamed former ISIS hostage told The Guardian that three of ISIS militants who guarded captured foreigners were British-born and that they were nicknamed "the Beatles."

Two red-state Democrats are facing Republican attacks for wanting to cut Social Security and Medicare, even though Republicans have been pushing Democrats for years to support cuts to Social Security and Medicare.