Republicans were so relieved that Donald Trump could button his jacket, wear his tie straight and deliver a speech that many judged to be "presidential" that few seemed to notice the road kill in the aisles of Congress - conservatism had just taken a big hit.
As the President made his first speech to the joint houses on Tuesday, many familiar Trump tropes got an airing - mostly Stephen Bannon, leavened with a side-serve of Ivanka Trump.
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Trump appeals for unity in Congress speech
In his first address to US Congress, President Donald Trump has delivered a message of 'unity and strength'.
But sober and focused as was the President's measured new delivery, the big event was not what he said, so much as how it was received.
Handily, a meter was running for all to see how well the junking of what Republicans had fought over for decades was received by the GOP establishment's supposed keepers of party orthodoxy; sitting over Trump's left shoulder was House Speaker Paul Ryan, whose reaction was so constantly and smilingly positive that he and others in the leadership were likened to bobble-headed dolls.
"Those looking for some fiscal discipline, a market approach to trade, a pro-growth immigration policy, reasonable education and training ideas, respect for individual rights and a responsible, cogent foreign policy will need a new party," The Washington Post's conservative commentator Jennifer Ruben observed.
In the past, the GOP has demanded that people be left to fend for themselves in the free market, but Trump wants to be their handmaiden - "Everything that is broken in our country can be fixed. Every problem can be solved. And every hurting family can find healing and hope."
Trump's speech was all about spending - a trillion dollars on national infrastructure, tens of billions for defence and a blank cheque for his new deportation force from the public pocket book; and a whack from corporate pocket books "to make childcare accessible and affordable, to help ensure new parents that they have paid family leave to invest in women's health".
The indignant "WTF … " reaction was left to lobbyists and think tanks.
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Kent Lassman, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute: "The President reaffirmed his commitment to relieving the overwhelming regulatory burden that costs Americans nearly $US1.9 trillion each year.
"However, the rhetoric in the remainder of his address lacked an understanding of some basic economic principles. Trade barriers, 'Buy American' mandates, regulated drug prices and trillion-dollar infrastructure projects are a far cry from the policies that produce job creation and economic growth."
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The Peterson Institute for International Economics: "National debt is already at its highest level since 1950, and is projected to grow rapidly in coming years.
"On our current path, our debt is on pace to reach unprecedented and dangerous levels, slowing economic growth, hurting jobs and wages, and endangering our national security. Interest costs alone are projected to total more than $US5 trillion over the next 10 years."
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Trump is promising that a "revved up economy" will pay the bills. But the White House is causing tremors over the stability of global trade with its proposed trade agenda - which, according to a leaked copy acquired by The Financial Times, includes a preparedness to simply ignore rulings by the World Trade Organisation that Washington deems to infringe US sovereignty.
The document does not name China, but it lists the trade practices of which Trump complained during last year's election campaign, saying that the US could unilaterally impose tariffs as it feels.
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The document's list of objectives includes "resisting efforts by other countries, or international bodies like the World Trade Organisation, to weaken the right and benefits of, or increase the obligations under, the various trade agreements to which the US is a party".
"If the Trump administration follows through on the proposals in this document, it would be a body blow to the multinational trade system that the US has helped to build,"Â Eswar Prasad, a senior professor of trade policy at Cornell University, told The Washington Post.
"The WTO will lose effectiveness and credibility in trade resolutions if the US decides to walk away."
Warning of a lawless system of global trade, the Peterson Institute's Chad Bown, said: "The difficulty is, once we … say the WTO rules imply a lot more flexibility in what we're allowed to do, we can be 100 per cent certain other countries will start to do the same. That's what will ultimately undermine the US system, and there will be big repercussions for US exporters."
And all Tuesday night's applause and standing ovations - 90 by the count of The New York Times - glossed over the fights to come.
Republican senators, who are fretting that Trump is seemingly willing to retain aspects of Obamacare, are threatening to torpedo his proposed "repeal and replace" of the Affordable Care Act - and Trump can expect grief too if he presses ahead with his out-of-left-field suggestion on Tuesday that he was open to a process by which millions among the undocumented migrants in the US might be granted legal status.
But Trump being Trump, Tuesday night's speech would not have been complete without him gilding the lily.
His claim that drugs were pouring across the US border "at a now unprecedented rate" was wrong - marijuana is down from a peak in 2009; cocaine seizures were down by half last year.
Some of the business deals for which he took credit were made before he was elected.
His job projections for the Keystone XL pipeline were wildly exaggerated, as was his measure of how many people are seeking work, but can't find a job.