Ding! Ding! Ding! We Have A Winner!

This, I think, explains why the Republican Party is seen one way while it has ALWAYS done another. It certainly goes the heart of the Question: 'MSNBC! Pat Buchanan! WTF?!?!?':

[C]onservative politics was not “reborn” after the Goldwater campaign in 1964 and cemented by Reagan. Instead, the Nixonites allowed this new ideological trend to be the face of the party, but they retained control over the institutional functions of the party, as evidence by Nixon’s resurgence. This observation explains a lot of other puzzling feature of Republican politics. This is not the party of small government, it’s the party of national security. The party of individual liberty and self-reliance is actually the party of “enhanced interrogation.” The idea tying it together is national security, with superficial appeals to whatever helps win the election.