“When Reagan left office, that coalition began to fall apart, and by 1992 it was mostly gone.”
The Reagan coalition began falling apart because George H.W. Bush not only walked away from it once he took the oath of office as president in 1989, he intentionally and rapidly purged his administration of Reagan conservatives during. Not unlike John Boehner dissing the Tea Party as soon as he took the speaker’s gavel the Tea Party made possible.
The insufferable, revolting Jack Germond said one true thing in his life, one evening on the McLaughlin Group: “The Reagan people came to Washington to do something. The Bush people came to Washington to be somebody.”