Having lived in a rural/small town Republican area and a Democrat big city, my thinking is somewhat different on the "government handouts" issue.
Although there are plenty of Democrats here in the city that are on government programs, the number of people that were on disability, Social Security, welfare, food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. was as high or higher in my old Republican hometown. This liberal area has far more institutions of higher learning and middle class demographics. The Republican old hometown is slowly dying, like so many small towns throughout the nation. Where there are jobs in the Republican counties, the wages are stagnant. The local politicians pushed so hard to get a Walmart, now more of the downtown is vacant, run-down buildings, plenty of bars, and lots of arrests. I can't remember the number, but the majority of kids in the shrinking hometown school system qualified for the "free lunch" program because their families were below the poverty line. And some of them have families larger than what I see here in the city. Of the kids that graduate, the vast majority will move far away from there. Of my graduating class, there are more that have died than have stayed in the small town.
Sure, there are rich and middle class Republicans that are prominent in the party. But I've seen a lot of Republicans that are dirt poor and vote that way because Jesus tells them to, or they don't like minorities, or they like to imagine that they're rich, elite Republicans that can really relate to people like Romney.
I don't see myself as strongly Democrat. It's more that I just can't agree with so much of the Republican Party. They've become the party of "no". Republicans, many but not all, have no interest in working on improving the country. It's more like they want to damage the Democrats regardless of the damage to the nation. That's a lousy policy.
I won't say the Republican Party is dead. But they really need to reinvent themselves or they will be dead.