al scientists, using DW-Nominate scores,2 have concluded that the Republicans in Congress have lurched far to the right compared to the 1970s and 1980s. And even anecdotally, figures like former House Speaker John Boehner, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and the late Arizona Sen. John McCain — considered solid conservatives in the George H.W. Bush era — found themselves cast as insufficiently right-wing by the party’s base in recent years.

In Bush’s era, Fox News did not exist. Deeply conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch and their allies had not created a huge network of right-wing groups that constitute basically an alternative political party. There was no tea party or House Freedom Caucus. Trump may be personally more conservative than Bush, but even if he weren’t, the forces that push a Republican president to the ideological right are stronger now than they were in the 1980s.

Bush himself famously signed a tax increase to help reduce the federal budget deficit, a move that angered the party’s conservative base. His two GOP successors (George W. Bush and Trump) never even really considered tax hikes, aware of the power of the party’s conservative coalition.