How do Republicans shed the need to present themselves as 'compassionate'? Conservative principles require discipline, hard work, ethics, doing what is right. There is nothing literally 'compassionate' about liberalism, its theology is about spreading around the misery index. Electing peoples who are self disciplined in the abilities in spreading the misery index promising peace, peace, peace, and prosperity has filled the void that 'compassionate' conservatism created.
The Reagan Democrats were self disciplined, hard working, and for the most part ethical peoples. The majority of them lived really really hard times. However, their offspring do not have a clue what hard times mean, but at the pace things are going they are going to find out real fast and the majority of them have no education on how to survive.
And the majority of these offspring of Reagan Democrats see government as the giver and taker of rights. They have become government slaves to answer other peoples problems. I know many hard working people, yet they work very hard looking for short cuts to succeed. That works only for so long before they reach a dead end and have to turn to government or relatives for a hand out.
Compassionate conservatism created more liberal minded people than it freed.
Because it treated both like they are just labels, with no difference at their cores. You could just "decide" to be one or the other when in fact it takes deep, deep disagreements with the other side to be one or the other. And both sides are actually different, with vastly different world-views.
Making a mush of the terms is pointless.