Via John Cole, this would be Michael Barone of US News and World Report:

This is similar but not identical to a point I’ve often made: that the Republican Party is the party of people who are considered, by themselves and by others, as normal Americans—Northern white Protestants in the 19th century, married white Christians more recently—while the Democratic Party is the party of the out groups who are in some sense seen, by themselves and by others, as not normal—white Southerners and Catholic immigrants in the 19th century, blacks and white seculars more recently.

Ah, but the times they be a-changing.

Secularism, for one, is on the rise. If it’s not the “new normal,” then particularly amongst a younger demographic, it’s becoming far more accepted.

And yes, the Democratic base is made of a far more disparate groups than the balding white men who constitute the core of the conservative movement. But in a nation growing diverse, diversity itself becomes more “normal.”

If you go to the mall on any given Saturday, what do you see? Do you see a place full of just white people? Or do you see blacks and Latinos and Asians along with those white people? That’s what America looks like these days, by the way.

The root of conservatives’ cultural disaffection is their realization that their “normal” isn’t quite as normal as it used to be.