Before it all went left, there actually used to be such a thing as a "conservative democrat" consisting of significantly of working class catholics.

But yea, what you're describing, was a long term overhaul of the party itself as it aligned through the decades more and more "progressive" rhetoric.

A lot of them tried to move to independent/3rd parties, but no one had the collective strategy to game the system.

Until Trump, Bannon, Bossie, et al., came along and were able to grow the populist party within the conservative (and swamp mixed) repub party.

Then the rest is kind of history, even those apprehensive of trump in the beginning have come on board when they saw that his populist nationalist principles of being for and by the people was genuine. The swamp remained swamp, and life-long conservative dems that couldn't stand their lies have voted republican or even came over and became (Trump) republicans.

But yea, your aunt is on point.