You’re confusing party rhetoric with actual voter ideology. Look at the Senate map from 2006 and tell me there hasn’t been a reshuffling: www.electionresources.org/us/maps/senators.php?election=2006

U.S. elections are a dynamic equilibrium where each party is trying to get to 51%. I live in Annapolis and the WASPs with boats viscerally hate Trump. But they were a core Romney ‘12 demographic.