In 1991, William Webster, the CIA director under George Bush, resigns prior to giving testimony against Bush in the Iran-Contra hearings. This is the final nail in the coffin of Bush's presidency, and he himself resigns a month later. The Republican Party, held together mainly by nostalgia since the fall of communism, splinters after the loss of a second president to scandal in recent memory, and its members drift into the Libertarian Party and the newly-formed Independent Party.