It’s always been that way.
Bush League Republicans have been lying to us for decades.
Absolutely right. Republican “strategists” like Rove and others have constantly told us that our candidates needed to “move to the center” (i.e., become more liberal) in order to appeal to the independents. But the assumption that independents were registered as independent because their political leanings were somehow perfectly middle of the road was always a fallacy, and has become even more so in recent years.
The “strategists” have completely missed the fact that Republican spinelessness caused large numbers of Republicans to re-register as Independents, not because they thought the Republican Party wasn’t liberal (or “moderate”) enough for them, but because it wasn’t CONSERVATIVE enough! Independents therefore contain a large contingent of disaffected conservatives who are looking for more conservative policies, and who will vote for candidates who stand strongly for defending American sovereignty.