"...American politicians have deliberately pandered to and encouraged such polarization in their efforts to manipulate the results at the polls."

            LH - I think Robert F. Kennedy has this one nailed. He explained in an interview I watched some time back that the true secular American conservatives couldn't get their program off the gound. There just weren't enough converts, as witnessed by what happened to Barry Goldwater in 1964. So they went after the religious right to bulk up their numbers and forged a coalition. That way the conservatives got power, and the RR got access to power.
          What they ended up doing is electing Ronald Reagan in 1980, and America has been on the skids since that time.