Oddbean

While I agree with you, for the same reasons (basically, I am old enough to remember), you are forgetting that Trump has disrupted all that. Remember how in 2015, and even after being elected, Fox attacked Trump and built the "Nevertrumper" Republican movement. They only stopped after an all-out war when Trump forced them to submission, destroying then-Fox darling Megyn Kelly's career (and more people's) in the process. Same thing with the GOP in general. Trump has destroyed the right leg of the Neocon Uniparty and has made it into something else, at least for as long as he is there. That alone merits more than any policy Trump may enact. The "media" and the "intelligentsia" behind it in academic circles and dark offices, the powers behind the curtains, are fully aligned with the Democratic Party now precisely because its apparatus has resisted effectively against any sort of similar movement. Trump in fact did not come from within the GOP, that's how he managed to destroy it. There is no Trump, and no risk of a Trump-like figure emerging from within the Democratic leg of the Neocon Uniparty. Ergo the whole system in block aligns behind it.