"Transgenderism" wasn't even a thing back then. I'm not even kidding, "Transsexual" was the term then and it was still categorized as a major psychological disorder and required considerable checkoffs from psychologists and long term talk therapy before transitioning was even on the table. The level of medical control on it basically meant that only those people who had serious and well established "gender dysphoria" were even considered for such treatments, and that was considered basically the treatment of last resort after all other options to correct the dysphoria were exhausted.I thought that Bush's attacks were on same-sex marriage and that he was silent about transgenderism?
As such, most on the right didn't even consider it a major issue in the culture war because it basically wasn't, those who transitioned were basically people with a serious mental illness that our best (and last resort) treatment was transitioning. As such they were mostly pitied.
It wasn't until the early 2010s when the psychological definitions were changed and transition went from a last resort that took years of therapy to get to, to a first resort that we saw this sudden influx of transtrenders and the use of trans as a wedge issue.