How did evangelical Republicans become a solid bloc?
It happened for a variety of reasons: the ’60s drove all of these cultural issues to the fore — sex, drugs, rock and roll, and that helped to mobilize evangelicals and give them a sense of threat. Ironically, they were also mobilized by Jimmy Carter, who thought he could win that constituency and keep it. He won it in ’76, to a larger degree than Democrats usually do. Carter was the first Democrat since Harry Truman to carry the Southern Baptists. But the evangelicals discovered soon enough that, though Carter had an evangelical style and called himself an evangelical, he was theologically and politically much more [liberal] than they had hoped. So there was this constituency out there that could be drawn over to the Republicans. And Reagan worked on it very hard. So, by the time we get to 1984, we get roughly the same voting percentage we have now of evangelicals and fundamentalists for Republicans. And if something has been part of a constituency for 20 years, you have to say it’s p
