Analysis: Barbara Bush failed to grasp how the Bushes helped pave the way for Trump
By Eugene Scott Eugene Scott Reporter covering identity politics for The Fix Email Bio Follow March 27 at 3:00 PM Former first lady Barbara Bush expressed her disgust with President Trump in her new memoir — and goes so far as to blame the man who beat her son in the Republican primary for some of her health issues. But some think that Bush may be ignoring the groundwork that her own family laid on the way for Trump and the current GOP.
Few families have had a larger impact on the GOP than the Bush family. And while Bush said she could not recognize the Republican Party — a political party that in her final days she no longer considered herself a member of — to some outside of the Bush clan, there is a direct line from President George H.W. Bush to President Trump.
Others rehashed some of those commonalities after news of the former first lady’s “bewilderment” at Trump’s rise went public.“Not super bewildering. Her husband, President George HW Bush leveraged the racism of the Willie Horton ad — a coded racist appeal to white voters — to victory. President Trump has taken that ball and run with it.”— Terrell J.
And it may come as a surprise that the former first lady did not understand the Americans who were drawn to Trump, because it appeared that her husband and his campaign aides did. Despite not having any meaningful ties to the Deep South, Bush launched his presidential campaign in Gulfport, Miss., “largely to demonstrate the importance of the South to the GOP in the electoral strategy against Clinton,” according to veteran journalist John Mashek.
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