Submitted by theotherbogart t3_yr2pva in todayilearned
Reply to comment by bigbura in TIL In 1983, Air Force One (with Reagan aboard) landed six minutes before a microburst slammed into the ground at Andrews Air Force Base, causing wind speeds to hit 149 mph. At the time, that was the fastest wind speed ever measured by an anemometer. by theotherbogart
There is very little evidence that H.W. Bush had any major influence over the Reagan administration. Reagan had his own circle of insiders and military men that he leaned on.
Bush and Reagan didn't necessarily dislike each other, but their wives hated each other. Bush was likely selected by Reagan as a running mate due to his popularity with those who previously endorsed Ford in the 76 election and because Bush was so popular in the Republican primaries.
Bush actually openly disagreed with Reagonmics, but shut up about it and played "party politics" when he joined Reagan's ticket in 1980.
He was really the last WASP President. His son maybe started out that way, but 9/11 took everything in a very different direction and then after two failed bids for the White House, Trump came out of nowhere and remade the Republicans as a working-class populist party.
I would argue that Trump didn't come out of nowhere, but was more so a symptom of a perfect storm.
An angry white industrial working-class that was knocked down by Reagonmics, and finally killed off NAFTA, the tech industry, and globalization. The final bit was killed of by the 2008 Recession.
The other side of the equation were white supremacists that were aside themselves that black people lived in the Whitehouse for eight years. Add in the 9-11-era fear mongering (South Asians and non-christians are out to get us), spliced with the growing fear over population projections for the next fifty years (latins and asians are growing to challenge the WASP in population numbers).
I think these two things left the door wide open for someone like Trump who simply promised "it all" to scared and angry white voters.
I think it's a lot more complicated than that though. Trump massively gained with Hispanic voters and probably blacks and Asians too in the 2020 election, groups. So even though he may have heavily relied on non-Hispanic white voters in the Midwest, in his four years, he really started to rebuild the Republican Party as a working-class populist party.
The number of "white supremacists" in the US is vanishingly tiny, and the "progressive" left's attempt to associate Trump voters with this small group probably ended up doing more harm than good, tarring the entire Democratic Party, which previously had represented working class-whites as late as Obama's reelection in 2012, as being a party that despised the working class whites as "white supremacist". It also apparently didn't impress black, Asian, and Latino voters, who didn't appear to become more Democratic-leaning after Trump's election. Rather, it appears to have only been well-received among the Democrats growing "progressive", white collar base that's concentrated in a few, mostly coastal metropolitan areas. And that's likely why, if trends continue, Republicans are headed toward a supermajority in the Senate. That's probably one reason why McConnel has no interest in getting rid of the filibuster. Within the next decade, there's a good chance that Republicans will have enough Senators to pass legislation no matter what the opposition party thinks.
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