The reality is that the GOP has abandoned the ideology of it's fore bearers. The fundamental success of the GOP beginning with Nixon, peeking with Reagan, and crashing with Bush, was a combination of the "old" Republican base of suburban whites and westerners with the disgruntled old Democrats: blue-collar whites and southerners. However beginning in the 1990s the "new" Republicans began to take over the party. These voters joined the Republicans because they were disgruntled with the Democratic views on social/moral values issues, their foreign policy, and to a lesser extent taxes. When the "Dixiecrats" and "Reagan Democrats" took over the focus shifted to these issues, rather than the issues that were the base of the old GOP: balanced budgets, support of business and enterprise, and a non-confrontational yet tough foreign policy.
In many ways the old GOP was popular because they were "clean": They were the suburban alternative to the dirty, corrupt, urban and back-country Democrats. Honestly you just have to look at my home-state, Maryland. For generations the Democrats relied on the Baltimore urban machine and the rural, tobacco and fishing-reliant voters on the Eastern Shore and Southern peninsula. The Republicans won the farmers and the D.C. suburbs. However today the Democrats have become the suburban and urban party in Maryland, with the GOP becoming the rural party. Nationally this has occurred as well, with the GOP becoming dirty party: spending that goes to no where, corruption issues, and a President who people viewed as secretive and dirty.
I can't disagree with any of your points. Just a little nitpick: the Republican foreign policy WAS confrontational. The big difference with the Democrats was it's non-interventionism.
That principle remained in place till W.'s election, when the neo-cons (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Kristol, etc. ) hijacked the party.
