George W. Bush had strong connections with the Reactionaries (fundamentalist religion) and the PBPs (tax cuts and deregulation), but he basically ran as a unifying CD in 2000. At the time, the CDs were a large percentage, similar to the PBPs, of the GOP, and were disproportionately represented within the leadership. Bush’s failures in Iraq and with the Great Recession changed the balance within the party by discrediting the CD faction and the leadership as a whole in the eyes of party activists and the electorate as a whole. Republican voters were consequently ready to embrace a dramatic change in both tone and substance at the end of the second Bush term. As you know only too well, they got it.