Bushism And The Bush Coalition

Remarkably, she has, in those two weeks, single-handedly re-assembled the decisive Reagan coalition. ~John Brummett

While it must be reassuring to believe that Palin has such magical powers, she has not reassembled anything of the kind.  The Reagan coalition disappeared, or to be more accurate the Republican Party has changed significantly over the last 20 years just as the country has changed.  Today’s GOP is not even the Republican coalition of the ’90s.  What she has done is to excite members of the Bush coalition to send money, volunteer and turn out in November in larger numbers than they would have done otherwise.  She has most excited the Republican core of the Bush coalition that largely turned out in the same numbers for Republican candidates in 2006 as they did in previous cycles.  She is the attractive face of what has been called the “new fusionism,” the neoconservative-led marriage of pro-life social conservatives with interventionists.  As I have said before, she is the would-be future heir to the legacy of Bushism, an ideology that is effectively indistinguishable from this “new fusionism.”