Exactly, the uniqueness of the ranger comes from the players that likes the class, that may not meant much from the refluffers perspective, yes you could pottentially reduce a ranger to a theme/background thing, because mechanically they don't have anything truly unique to them, but once you do it, you essentially kill all but the most stereotipical rangers. What is a ranger? easy, a ranger is a ranger, the same way a bard is a bard and a paladin is a paladin. You can't reduce a ranger to a single mechanical element, because a ranger is the sum of the parts, there is not an individual part of the ranger that is the "ranger maker". Spellcasting? 4e and Complete Warrior rangers had no spells and they were still rangers, archery? Drizzit was no archer, Naturey skills? Urban rangers want to have a word with you...
I keep saying it, if Next reduced classes to themes, specially popular classes, then it will lose way more players than ever. If rangers get reduced to a theme, then noone gets to play one if themes are not used on a table, and in tables where themes are usable, all rangers become the same boring thing, because it gets impossible to customize a ranger, you already lost the customizing chance just to get plain old vanilla ranger.
Edit: and to me a Ranger is a master of his environment first and most, his abilities just follow suit to it. Try to reduce that to a theme/background combination