GOP shifting platform

[All Along The Watchtower]

Just to note: There's a concrete reason why the Republican Party, traditionally the party more enthusiastically backed by business interests, has been taken over by the Religious Right. While the average conservatively religious American is neither affluent nor politically active (besides voting, and even that is often abstained from too), the people who make up the activist and organizational "base" of the religious right are usually solidly middle-class, often upper-middle class, and some would qualify as being rich.

Affluent and upwardly mobile people have tended to vote Republican in the past, so that in itself wasn't a novel development; what was novel was the growing wealth and education of significant segments of the conservative evangelical denominations (or non-denominations), mostly in the South, Midwest, and West. With wealth and education comes growing social awareness and, for some inclined, political activism.

This is why the Republican Party is now religiously (Christian) conservative, as well as economically right-wing.