There was definitely a sea change with Reagan. His were the years of the "Religious Right" and "Moral Majority" (a play on Nixon's "Silent Majority"), the rise to power of Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, and other such hyperconservative religious leaders. It's basically the point at which the American Con-Evo (Conservative Evangelical) right woke up and discovered it wielded a certain amount of political clout. And the Republican party quickly sussed this and coopted the Religious Right for its own ends. (You give us votes to pass our pro-corporate agenda, we occasionally throw you a bone for your social conservative agenda.)

It was a marriage made in heaven. It has not yet given out, although it has strained some in recent years. It has resulted in middle-class Americans voting repeatedly to screw themselves financially, and in a string of presidential candidates who were vetted entirely on one issue: were they willing to say the believer's prayer, to wit: "I believe that human life begins at conception." Any other sin could be overlooked (and was) as long as the candidate could say the prayer. At the same time the con-evos were redefining Christianity as well to make it primarily about The Prayer, but that's another story.

On the other side of the aisle stood the Democrats, forsaken by a good number of their former stalwarts (dubbed at first "Reagan Republicans" as people who crossed over from being Democrats to being Republicans because of Reagan), and henceforth defined as a coalition of a lot of (mostly) small interest groups. As such they can't put together a coherent, strong platform to lure anybody back away from the Republicans, especially given that none of the Democratic contenders are willing to say The Prayer -- certain members of their coalition prevent it. Obama was elected not because he had a particularly strong message ("change" as a campaign platform isn't terribly convincing) but because he wasn't Bush, and after 8 years of mismanagement and malfeasance under Bush, the great middle, who aren't in anybody's coalition and aren't sold on The Prayer, were ready for change (which is the sense in which "change" won Obama the presidency -- he's not Bush or a Bush-like entity).

How's that?

O..O
=o=