From driftglass:
George Herbert Walker Bush dreamed of a certain kind of Republican party. The same Republican party which David Brooks has spent 30 years conning credulous Beltway chumps and cloistered intellectuals into believing existed just beyond the visible spectrum of mere mortals and vituperative, foul-mouthed Liberal bloggers. A party whose past is always glorious and whose renaissance is always just around the corner.
George Herbert Walker Bush’s dreamed of a GOP run as a gentleman’s farm: orderly and well-tended by old-money, patrician internationalists. Maintained by loyalty and noblesse oblige. But Bush 41 was also perfectly willing to countenance putting every monstrous trait that has come to define the modern Republican party in-harness to pull the plow and bust the sod of his gentleman’s farm.
And in the end, that’s what killed his dream.