Karl was certainly the master of creating issues from thin air for the moron class to feel indignant about (a basic human need amongst the perpetually stupid), tagging them with bite sized, deep fried catch phrases, and sending it down the slop trough for gleeful consumption. If the GOP had no such non-issue generation machine, it would dry up and blow away within a year.
It would be impossible for today's GOP to address any real issue, because it no longer operates to any value system. It is nothing more than a pandering machine for near term asset strippers and their kin. The GOP's message varies according to their patchwork, (I'm sorry...'Big Tent') constituency, who basically are a collection of single issue rabble who have relatively nothing in common with each other save their libhate and fear of a dynamic future), but it's prime directive is simple: Concentrate wealth, public and private, amongst our asset stripping base. Give America's wealth to our elite friends. The idiot classes, of which KKK is a happy member, constitute the factotums to keep the machine running, even as it runs right over them in the process.
Sewing the stupid into a voting block has to be one of the most astute political achievements of our time. Unfortunately for the GOP it couldn't last, although it certainly lasted longer than it should have, for the stupid are just that. Eventually, they become confused, lost, and betrayed amidst all those broken 40 oz bottles, battlefield embarrassments, and past due notices in a world that no longer offers the luxury of perpetually ignored problems.