frantic effort to bring members of the conservative house freedom caucus along while not alienating more moderate republicans, an effort that ultimately failed. what does the defeat mean for president trump and the gop agenda? let s ask wall street journal deputy editor dan henninger, kim strassel and columnist mary ann says a ya o grady and bill mcagain. mcgurn. joe, why did this fail? well, they came very close to getting a majority. as recently as wednesday. then what happened was you had hfc, house freedom caucus, keep upping their demands, keep moving the goalpost in a way that alienated the moderate members paul: they tried the get concessions for their agenda, and it unraveled the bill. right. they said we want to repeal more of obamacare s insurance