Are traditional Americans now radicals? part 2

So I'm having this nice discussion with two republican coworkers.  At first it was a boring discussion for me, because everything that was said I agreed with.  It was "preaching to the choir" stuff.  But then the doctor said, "Catering to the extremes of both parties is how you lose elections."

I said, "Woah!"  

He looked at me funny, as I said, "Catering to the extremes is how you win elections. Catering to the middle is how you lose elections."  

He said, "Give me one example." 

I said, "I will give you many, "Gerald R. Ford, George Herbert Walker Bush, Bob Dole, John McCainn, and Mitt Romney."

He said, "What about them."

"They all catered to the center and lost. Ronald Reagan and Bush catered to conservatives, and they won. Obama catered the extremes in his party in 2012, he ran as an all out socialist who didn't call himself one, and he won.  You win by catering to what you call extremes."

He said, "What do you mean what I call extremes?"

I said, "The democratic party has moved so far to the left and has had so much success that the republican establishment felt the need to follow suit.  So both the democratic party and republican establishment has moved so far left that they make traditional Americans seem radical. So I say I'm a conservative republican, and you associate that with radical."  

He said nothing, only looked at me as though I was the radical; the idiot.

I said, "That's why democrats can get away with saying that republicans cater to their guns and their religion. That's why they call republicans dogmatic people who just hang out with people they agree with. They try to cling all republicans to the radicals on the far right, the people who are the mainstream but are treated as outsiders and radicals. And that's how Donald Trump is gaining so much momentum, because he is saying all the things we "'radicals' have been thinking but haven't had the nerve to say.  He is saying the truths that liberal republicans and democrats now refer to as 'controversial.'  That's why, when I'm watching the today show, and a guest says that 'guns don't kill, people do,' Matt Lauer says, 'My controversial guest...  To that I say, 'When did telling the truth become 'controversial?'  It became controversial the moment traditional Americans were viewed as radicals."

He said,"Evidence please!"

"Nearly every president, both democrat and republican, all the way to John F. Kennedy, with the exception of Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and Woodrow Wilson, were conservatives in the sense, although they weren't called conservatives they were called liberals, or what we now refer to as classical liberals.  They were all traditional Americans who toted Bibles, guns, and defended liberties tooth and nail."

He was mad.  Here I was debating a fellow republican, just stating the truth, and he was mad. However, he wanted to continue the discussion, but duty called.