No, but the base of the current GOP is somewhat different from where the party was ten years ago.
The GOP of 2004 that I supported is now considered RINO territory, but the establishment hasn't accepted this yet nor caught up with this notion yet. (I still think it's a riot that Jeff Flake, who was Mr. Conservative back in the 2000s, is now being drummed out of the party as a liberal).
Basically, there's been a shift in the party bases that correlated strongly with Obama's elections and Trump's election (which was a reax to Obama's elections). Before 2008, GOP victories meant suburbanites plus rural voters, and Democratic victories meant urban liberals, non-whites, and blue collar union types all banding together. That's a very crude description, but that's basically the way things were divided.
Obama seemed to blow things up by inviting the young upscale whites into the Democratic Party, and in turn seemed to push out the blue collar Rust Belt whites, who then started voting Republican. I also think that Trump capitalized on this trend more than he facilitated it.
I also think that tons of old New Deal Democrats passing away during the 2000s probably assisted the transition of white voters in places like Iowa to being more friendly to the Republicans.
So now you've got a coalition of non-whites and urban/suburban whites voting Democratic and a coalition of rural whites and blue collar urban whites voting Republican. Which could make for more extreme cultural policies in both parties. Grab the popcorn.
Well it is merely a continuation of what Phillips discussed in The Emerging Republican Majority.
The two parties have always evolved this way. Whenever one party has seemingly become alienated regarding a group that has long composed that party, they then re-allign to the other party.
It is why in the 1960's, Irish, Scots-Irish, and Southern ancestral voters, the three groups that in most places had long constituted the Democratic base, became Republicans. As the Democrats were perceived as too friendly to environmentalists, then places like West Virginia and Western PA shifted heavily towards the Republicans.
One thing you touch on that Phillips didn't really delve much into is the generational aspect.
That being said, it goes without saying that the Party's evolve to reflect their present composition at a given time. Since the GOP has gone through some radical transformations in its base at various points, those points often featured massive anti-establishment rebellions as the old guard dug in and tried to hold on to power.
Phillips noted in 1967 and 1968 the Republicans representing Yankee white districts and silk stocking areas shifted markedly to the left in their voting in Congress. This was an attempt to appease demographic changes in those districts to sustain themselves and thus facilitate their survival to hopefully fight back and rest back control of the party. A lot of these Representatives, supported Rockefeller instead of Nixon.
If the parallel applies here than the future of Kasich and others in the NeveTrump movement will be the same as the Republicans supporting Rockefeller in 1964 and 1968. One thing that Phillips did not comprehend was Nixon was a transitional figure, and that the Republicans would look far different, so different that he has basically hated the party ever since President Reagan was in office. Trump will likely be that same transitional figure as Nixon was and ironically he appears to be painfully similar in other ways as well. So while Kasich and Flake might be doomed, it doesn't mean that the future is Trump anymore than the future of the GOP Was Nixonian Republicanism.
In fact, Reagan's Revolution was merely the same demographics that powered Nixon, powering a takeover motivated by outrage at some of the very policies that Nixon enacted. Western farmers and oilmen pissed at the EPA, middle class people pissed at price controls etc etc etc. The Republican Party loves to eat itself you might say.
