Bristol Palin and her white trash boyfriend break up

[Duckie]

When did the Bible-thumpers hook up with the GOP anyway? The party's been big-business since Reconstruction, but did Reagan bring in the fundies?

Oddly, it was Carter who made religion a public matter and courted the religious to vote for him, but for "I'm a good person, look at how pious and Baptist I am" reasons, not Conservative "Kill the Gays" modern religious right behavior. However, the link between the Religious Right, Racist South, Big Business, and the other planks of the republican party all fell together during Reagan's time, although of course there were hints of it beforehand with Nixon bringing in the racist part of the equation with his Southern Strategy.

[Jalinth]

Oddly, it was Carter who made religion a public matter and courted the religious to vote for him, but for "I'm a good person, look at how pious and Baptist I am" reasons, not Conservative "Kill the Gays" modern religious right behavior. However, the link between the Religious Right, Racist South, Big Business, and the other planks of the republican party all fell together during Reagan's time, although of course there were hints of it beforehand with Nixon bringing in the racist part of the equation with his Southern Strategy.

Nixon basically pioneered the Southern strategy. The Racist/Religous South was Goldwater/Nixon vintage. Reagan was more of a Western small government conservative type movement although obviously got the benefit of the Nixonian era allegiances. The religious part might have been present, but it wasn't that strong. I'd call the Bush II version a neo-Con/Big-Business/Religious alliance of convenience which lead to the near decade of fine, upstanding government we are all enjoying the results of. Please excuse the ongoing fires and smoke.

[Mr Bean]

The proper sequence of how the Religious right came to dominate public discourse is essentially this.

Nixon builds a southern dominated religious outreach program in which he targets the Southern Baptists, the Protestants, the poor, under-privileged and of course famously, the racist shit-heads who were still in power during then as civil rights was still a highly active issue during his time. Carter came along and was essentially an effort by the Democrats to repeat Nixon's unprecedented success with someone even more religious than Nixon.

Nixon essentially sold himself as a path to power for the religious conservative movement. Support me 100% and I'll support you 110% and get rid of all these damn hippies once I'm in power. Had Carter's presidencey not been so much of a disaster then it might be the Democratic party dominated by religious interests nowadays but Carter's efforts failed and Reagan stepped into the breach. Bush I in fact lowered the amount of religious trappings with the office as did Clinton but as we know Bush II stepped in and cranked that shit up to 11.

[Darth Yoshi]

Ah. I'd known about Carter's open religiousness, but I wasn't aware of Nixon's role in the whole process. Thanks for the info.