Lis, your link and any possible commentary didn't make it ... happens all the time in the "news". Will you edit? I'd like to read the article.

This piece was written by Charley Cook and it is interesting.  He is talking about a study of Republican focus groups that have been done by Annenberg Public Policy Center. I find this rather telling about the current state of the Republican voter's mind. 

In what I thought was their most per­cept­ive con­clu­sion about Re­pub­lic­an voters’ state of mind, Hart and Hunt ob­served: “Be­hind all of this is a sense that these people have done a bet­ter job of fig­ur­ing out what they are against rather than what they are for. Part of the chal­lenge that emerges for Re­pub­lic­ans is that there ap­pears to be noth­ing pos­it­ive around which they can unite. Much of this dis­cus­sion was spent rail­ing against what is wrong rather than search­ing for a unit­ing vis­ion of what they want in their nom­in­ee. A unit­ing lead­er may yet emerge, but for now the con­sensus is around a quiet man versus 
a loud­mouth.”

I do think they have been like this for the last couple of decades.   Racism has been their glue and that has lost it's sticking power.