Parsing the meaning of last week - a few different takes

There's Andrew McCarthy at NRO.  He represents the "a-Hail-Mary-pass-was-the-best-option-given-the-circumstances" school:

It is repeatedly said that the crusade to defund Obamacare was delusional, that it never had a chance. That is an overstatement. Hail Mary passes are tried because they occasionally work. A lot of things have to go right, and the success rate is low. But a Hail Mary is a ray of hope when the clock nears zero, when something has to be done, and when you are out of better options.

So, were we out of better options? I think so. To my mind, if the defund plan was delusional, the GOP establishment’s “repeal Obamacare by winning elections” alternative is delusional squared.

[snip]

To repeal Obamacare on the establishment plan, the GOP needs sudden and sustained electoral success — despite the high hurdle of media bias. At least two federal election cycles, and more likely three or more (i.e., at least four years, and probably six or more), will be necessary. Obama, after all, will still be president for three more years and will never sign a repeal bill. Even if a Republican wins the White House in 2016, and even if Republicans by then have held the House and won the Senate, the GOP will not have overwhelming congressional majorities.

Then there's George Will in the WaPo putting forth the "the-rightie-base-was-hobbled-because-James-Madison-designed-the-relationship-between-government's-branches- that-way" view:

Obama wanted something simple rather than a product of Madisonian complexity. He wanted something elegantly unblemished by “any” messy legislative involvement, other than Congress’s tug of the forelock at final approval. It is, Obama thinks, unfortunate that he had to talk to many people.

He and some of his tea party adversaries share an impatience with Madisonian politics, which requires patience. The tea party’s reaffirmation of Madison’s limited-government project is valuable. Now, it must decide if it wants to practice politics.

Rauch hopes there will be “an intellectual effort to advance a principled, positive, patriotic case for compromise, especially on the right.” He warns that Republicans, by their obsessions with ideological purity and fiscal policy, “have veered in the direction of becoming a conservative interest group, when what the country needs is a conservativeparty .”

A party is concerned with power , understood as the ability to achieve intended effects. A bull in a china shop has consequences, but not power, because the bull cannot translate intelligent intentions into achievements. The tea party has a choice to make. It can patiently try to become the beating heart of a durable party, which understands this: In Madisonian politics, all progress is incremental. Or it can be a raging bull, and soon a mere memory, remembered only for having broken a lot of china. Conservatives who prefer politics over the futility of intransigence gestures in Madison’s compromise-forcing system will regret the promise the tea party forfeited, but will not regret that, after the forfeiture, it faded away.

Then there's Kimberly Strassel at the WSJ, who adheres to the "the-lack-of-clarity-about-strategy-and-results-did-in-the-defund-it-now-crusaders" view:

The Americans who supported the defund mission did so for the right reasons. They are correct that the law is a disaster, and that GOP leadership lacked a coherent plan to counter it this summer. They are correct that the House has every "right" to control the purse. They are correct that the party is too often rudderless, that it has lacked a vision, that it needs some bold figures willing to define a modern (which doesn't mean populist) conservatism.
But none of that changes the fact that Defund ObamaCare was the wrong fight, at the wrong time, facing impossible odds, and conducted by generals who lacked an endgame. Being right isn't always enough.

History is full of brave men who are famous mostly for losing. Republicans will have more shots to cut down ObamaCare, and pry out budget concessions. But to win those fights, they'll have to learn from this one. Brave charges mean little if they aren't followed by victory. 

What say you?  Are these mutually exclusive postmortems, or are there elements of each in an accurate assessment of what went down?

I know that nothing makes my teeth grind like some elected official who is universally regarded as having his or her conservative creds in impeccable order responding to questions on a talk show with boilerplate, talking points and platitudes.  I expect that out of those afflicted with Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome, and certainly out of FHers, who, after all, have much to hide regarding where they're really coming from.  So, I find myself inclined toward disillusionment way too often.

But then I run across a real-deal principled rightie such as Ted Cruz, or Sarah Palin, and I watch them proceed with happy-warrior certainty in the face of vitriol that includes death threats, and I begin to harbor a bit of hope for Western civilization.