As I’ve noted before, George H.W. Bush was the last prominent genuine conservative in the GOP. He didn’t do the “vision thing;” he used his best judgment to deal with circumstances as they occurred. He went back on his promise never to raise taxes because conditions changed. He paid for it at the polls.
Gingrich, his successor as leader of the GOP, was a completely different animal. Gingrich was at the forefront of the successful effort to turn tax cutting into a GOP religion. He saw the opportunities provided by the new media landscape and took full advantage of them. He thought civility was for wimps. He made the notion of the “conservative” bomb thrower something other than an oxymoron. He played to the base before anyone used either the term or the tactic.
All of these are, of course, attributes of today’s GOP. It is no wonder that Gingrich supported Trump, and still does.