Most of the Religious Right moved to the GOP in response to Nixon's Southern Strategy. As has been pointed out before, they are mostly W.J.Bryan Progressives; they like Big Government on "their" issues.
#####Most of the Religious Right moved to the GOP in response to Nixon's Southern Strategy. As has been pointed out before, they are mostly W.J.Bryan Progressives; they like Big Government on "their" issues.#####
You're very wrong about that. From the Civil War through the 1920s, both parties had active liberal and conservative wings. Ever hear of George Norris, Ole Kvale, & "Fightin'" Bob LaFollette? They were leaders of the GOP's left wing. The Progressive movement crossed party lines. It was Democrat in the South because you had to run as a Democrat there due to hostility to the Republicans dating back to the Civil War. But in the North, Progressives ran as Republicans. They practically took over some Northern states, including Minnesota & Wisconsin. Eventually, they spun off from both major parties and started new parties.
Ever wonder why the Democrat Party in Minnesota is called the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party? It's because the Farmer-Labor Party, a progressive leftist group, was so popular there that it rivaled the Democrats and the GOP. Eventually, it merged with the Democrats.
As long as both parties had an active conservative wing, Southerners sided with the Democrats because of lingering hostility to the earlier loss of states' rights under the Republicans. A few populist big government types won in the South (Huey Long, as an example) but far fewer than in the North. The South sent a stalwart block of conservative Democrats to Congress.
The New Deal saw the national Democratic Party move leftward under FDR. That might have strengthened the GOP in Dixie had the Republicans offered an alternative. They didn't. Their response to the New Deal was largely to go along with it. Their presidential candidates offered New Deal Lite to the voters. 1932 through 1963 saw the Republicans under the control of what became known as the Eastern Establishment wing, sometimes called the Rockefeller wing, of the party. It was mushy, "moderate", and ineffective. It was Democrat Lite. Other than the election of Eisenhower, who had war hero popularity, the GOP was dead in the water for most of those years.
They made no gains in the South precisely because they offered no conservative alternative. Besides, the South was electing conservative Democrats. While the GOP was busy going along with 90% of the New Deal, Dixie Democrats such as Tom Connally (Texas), Walter George (Georgia), Josiah Bailey (North Carolina), Cotton Ed Smith (South Carolina), and Carter Glass & Harry Byrd (Virginia) were providing the only opposition to the New Deal agenda. Senator George infuriated FDR to the point that he recruited a candidate to run against George in the Democrat primary (George won).
1964 saw the arrival of Goldwater, a conservative who challenged Rockefeller's Yankee liberals for control of the GOP. Guess what? The South listened. Five of the six states Goldwater carried were in the South (the other was his homestate of Arizona). So Nixon's Southern Strategy made all the sense in the world. With the Democrats further to the left than ever, and with Southerners being very conservative, they were winnable for the GOP. And they've been with us ever since, minus one election where the Democrats put up an unknown Southern governor who successfully passed himself off as a conservative (Carter in 1976).
Now, I know this upsets some of you. You think Southerners are stoooopid and you'd rather we were gone so that the GOP could be more like the Democrats, sort of Liberal-Lite. But we've ALWAYS been conservative and we moved into the GOP because it became our home after A) the Democrats moved too far to the left for us and B) the GOP provided a viable alternative, not just a slightly more modest version of the Democrats.
Stochastic or Patrick, do you care to explain your strategy for winning an electoral college majority without the South? I'd love to hear it, because other than the South all the GOP has are the Heartland & Rocky Mountain states. A big area on the map, but not many electoral votes. Not to mention that you seem to think some of those states (Kansas, for example) are full of stooopid people, too.
I had finished posting for the day, but I saw that the attacks on the South had begun again so I felt compelled to post.