Look at history, and you can see the religious left at the heart of America's great social-reform movements, from the fight against slavery to theNewDeal to the civil-rights movement (for some reason, Prohibition is usually left off the list).
Reagan in the 1960s became the Election Day champion of a broad and complex movement that had been building since the 1930s, a challenge to the politics of theNewDeal and all that came after.