Since last year’s presidential election a number of establishment Republicans have very publicly wrung their hands over what has happened to their party. George W. Bush has even lamented that he may turn out to have been the “last Republican president,” because Donald Trump represents something so alien to the party’s tradition.

But how different is Trump, really? He’s cruder, ruder and less competent than his Republican predecessors — although on that last point, we shouldn’t forget the Bush administration’s disastrous occupation of Iraq and botched response to Hurricane Katrina. But there’s a lot more continuity than his conservative critics want to admit. If Trumpism seems to be taking over the Republican Party, that’s largely because in many ways the party was already there.

What, after all, does the modern — by which I basically mean post-Reagan — Republican Party stand for? A cynic might say that it has basically served the interests of the economic elite while winning votes from the white working class with racial dog whistles. And the cynic would be right.

And if that’s what modern Republicanism is really about, how much has changed in the era of Trump? Consider two current news stories: the House Republican tax plan and the campaign that Ed Gillespie, a consummate Republican insider, has been running for governor of Virginia.