Billionaire Donald Trump has capitalized on his media savvy and the anti-establishment anger of Republican voters to become the first political neophyte to capture the party's White House nomination since World War II hero Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.

In 2010, the Grand Old Party had been overtaken by the insurgent Tea Party, whose mission was to upend politics as usual, ousting Republican and Democratic stalwarts in favor of fresh faces.

The party as a whole eventually embraced that message, but Trump took it to the next level -- and made that voter rage the center of his presidential run.

The Republican party machine even - perhaps inadvertently - directly contributed to Trump's rise.

During Barack Obama's first term, Trump championed the cause of the so-called "birther" movement, questioning whether Obama was bom in the US to challenge his presidency.

"The Republican Party looked at that and thought, 'Hey, this is a way to energize our base.' In the short term they did very little to stop him," said John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington thinktank.

"That gave Donald Trump prominence in the Republican Party, and now that prominence that it gave him is something that many people in the party are coming to regret," he told AFP.

"What he is is a reflection of a Republican Party that is addicted to short-term benefits and ignorant of long-term considerations."

When Trump declared he was running for president on June 16, 2015, it drew little attention and two-thirds of Republicans said they would never vote for him.

But three weeks later, he labeled Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists, sparking a firestorm that proved to be the lift-off of a mold-shattering campaign to "Make America

Great Again!" - fueled by obsessive media coverage.

A former reality TV star who flaunted his billions, Trump paradoxically tapped into white working class anger with attacks on immigration, free trade, and a sold-out political class, which he freely admitted to having paid to do his bidding in the past.

Treated as a joke initially and then as a passing phenomenon, Trump leaped from three percent support in the polls to the head of a 17-candidate field.

Winning primary after primary, he forced out early favorites like Jeb Bush, the brother and son of former Republican presidents.

Many traditional conservatives remain wildly opposed to his candidacy - notably those with advanced degrees -but Trump nevertheless has rallied the support of more than half of Republican voters.

His popularity now transcends typical ideological barriers. He is both conservative and moderate, a devout capitalist who slams free trade, a supporter of gun rights who promises not to touch Americans' Social Security benefits.

"I don't think it's a coherent conservative philosophy that's driving them - I think it's anger that's driving them," James Thurber, directoroftheCenterforCongressional and Presidential Studiesat American University in Washington, said.

The dormant xenophobia lurking on the American right also plays a role in his success, Hudak notes.