No, the reason the GOP brand is in the toilet is because the schools and the press have painted us a particularly way, year after year after year. It is what my students know and that IS IT.
Just to show you how insidious and complete this control is, find yourself a public scholar or intellectual who is an open conservative. Then see how they are referred to in publications: “Conservative scholar, professor so-and-so”—in the same way that publications would say “Nigerian scholar, professor so-and-so.”
For most people, even conservatives at heart, conservatism has become a foreign land.