Was GW a precursor

And the fact that he and his administration were not held accountable by the Obama admin also helped.

losing hundreds of thousands of lives. But bush has gentility. Trump zero.

Hey, if you're gonna kill people, do it with gentility!!!!

To me, more than GW, it was PNAC who showed the way. They demonstrated that the GOP would sell the presidency to anyone who could bring large amounts of cash to the table (no matter the true origins of that money be it domestic or foreign). Through strategy and savvy marketing the PNAC (and others they allied themselves to) chose their figure head (GW) and took control. Cheney, was there to help. We all know how Cheney's 'search' for a VP worked out. Oh my! Quelle surprise the PNAC had their man in the seat of power. A consequential VP just like GW said he wanted (and the PNAC wanted presumably).

Having understood the PNAC's template, the stage was set for others to follow suit. Find yourself a figure head and take control from behind the scenes. Putin, Mercer, Bannon, et al simply followed the PNAC path.

Well at least that is potentially part of what happened. History is a complicated thing with many strands, but I see a pattern of behavior behind both GW and tRump.

The Hippo

It's a reactionary, anti-intellectual ideology. The former guy just stepped seamlessly into their irrational loathing.

I am virtually certain that Rs like Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II loved the US. The issue was that they, to a person, believed that their own way was the best way to lead the US. That, plus incompetency or criminality, is not a good mix. But they did love this country.

I cannot say that about the monster claiming to be the 45th President. His allegiance is NOT to the US.

Trump wasn't the first guy to buck the GOP's establishment, it was Ron Paul. I still remember how edgy it used to be that he was against the war in Iraq.

Bush was in with the neo-conservatives. Very different in my opinion.

They were all puppets doing the bidding of subversive RW organizations. Reagan and the Bushes were working
for PNAC, as someone earlier posted. They also worked for The Heritage Foundation, Big Oil, and similar RW orgs.


Trump was mostly working for Trump, and more radical RW groups -- white nationalists/other racist groups, pseudo-patriots, RW militia groups, and anyone who wanted to buy his time and influence. I don't recall Trump being too much of a Big Oil puppet, and I don't think he's capable of that level of business. He was a cheerleader, but I doubt if he was a player in the Big Oil game, as were the Bushes/Cheney.
Trump opened up public lands for drilling, but that was likely at the request of the GOP, who took their orders from Big Oil. Trump didn't really understand what was going on. He's a so-called "real estate mogul", not an oilman.

Roger Stone. Paul Manafort. Roy Cohn. Karl Rove. All of them were spawns of Nixon.

but Republicans increasingly voted due to racial identity since the Southern Strategy and now that's all it is.

The rise of the ultra-right-wing GOP brand came from Rush Limbaugh taking ownership of the small market AM talk radio circuit. This is 20 years after the rise of Limbaugh's conspiracy-laden programming - the seeds and children of that anti-intellectual indoctrination are coming home to roost. Trump being the con-artist he is, obviously was able to seize upon that fake everyman schtick and ran with it.

If you want to go back further, then you can say Limbaugh's legacy is the AM radio shows of the RW Evangelical set that go from crisis to crisis to keep their audiences hooked. Also why the current set of RW Evangelical "prophets" is reaching out to the exact same audience. There really is no difference in the cons that they are enacting on their audiences.

GW represented the Country-club conservatism which was rejected soundly in the 2016 GOP primary runoffs. His legacy would have been his brother, Romney, Marco Rubio, or even Lindsay Graham. Cheney is in that mold too - which is why she's at odds.