It really shouldn't be astonishing (although I disagree with your assessment of the situation in Gaza in particular -- Israel has been doing some seriously fuck

It really shouldn't be astonishing (although I disagree with your assessment of the situation in Gaza in particular -- Israel has been doing some seriously fucked up shit in the region for a long time). The most obvious long term response to Nixon's Southern Strategy is to do the opposite and wait for the GOP's embrace of being the conservative white party to screw them over. They've succeeded at that. Every demographic other than straight married white women and straight white men prefer the Democratic Party. Rhetoric painting that demographic as the enemy (often exaggerated IMO but based on at least partial truths most of the time) helps unify those groups despite their differences. Of course that's a big part of the polarization in our politics, but we're approaching a tipping point where the GOP's current position will become untenable and that might result in the polarization being dialed down as the GOP attempts to rebrand itself and expand it's constituency again.