(Legit not sure if you’re a fellow millennial that goofed how long ago twenty years ago was, or if Reagan Republicans stuck around longer than I thought. I didn’t start paying attention to politics until college.)
I guess Bush Republicans would be a better turn of phrase. But they all came out of the same White Flight that Reagan kicked off in the 1980s. The big Republican landslides of 1994, 2002, and 2010 either flipped or purged a bunch of the Kennedy Democrats from the Gulf Coast states and turned them into GOP strongholds.
The gerrymandering of the first Bush term also gave birth to a bunch of flipped House seats and state legislatures, ultimately paying off big in 2004 (and again in 2010 and 2014 and 2016 and 2022).
Timeline check. Reagan Republicans in 2005?
(Legit not sure if you’re a fellow millennial that goofed how long ago twenty years ago was, or if Reagan Republicans stuck around longer than I thought. I didn’t start paying attention to politics until college.)
I guess Bush Republicans would be a better turn of phrase. But they all came out of the same White Flight that Reagan kicked off in the 1980s. The big Republican landslides of 1994, 2002, and 2010 either flipped or purged a bunch of the Kennedy Democrats from the Gulf Coast states and turned them into GOP strongholds.
The gerrymandering of the first Bush term also gave birth to a bunch of flipped House seats and state legislatures, ultimately paying off big in 2004 (and again in 2010 and 2014 and 2016 and 2022).