But when other evangelical leaders joined GOP operatives to activate evangelicals as Republican voters, it was impossible to doubt what this movement was about. And with the election of Ronald Reagan and the defeat of a clutch of Democratic senators in 1980, the New Christian Right became a thing to be reckoned with.
By the 1988 election cycle, the Christian Right (no longer new) had established itself as an essential component of the Republican coalition. That year witnessed a surprisingly successful run for the GOP presidential nomination by pentecostal Pat Robertson, proprietor of the Christian Broadcasting Network and host of its daily newsmagazine, “The 700 Club.”
The strategy of both the Reagan and Bush administrations was to give the Christian right — or religious right, as Falwell among others called it — a good deal of lip service but limited concrete action. This left a sizable cohort ready to follow former Nixon speechwriter Pat Buchanan in his insurgent effort to wrest the presidential nomination from Bush in 1992.
Buchanan’s campaign slogan, “America First,” harked back to the America First isolationists who opposed U.S. entry into World War II and whose most prominent figure was Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh. Speaking in support of Bush’s renomination at the 1992 Republican Convention, Buchanan hurled down the gauntlet of religious nationalism.
“Pat Buchanan has now taken over a movement that Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed spent eight years building up,” Kristol told The Washington Post early in the 1996 primary season. “Ralph Reed thinks the way to win the culture war over the long term is to damp down the enthusiasm of some of his followers and lead a long march through the institutions. Pat Buchanan wants to lead a fixed bayonet charge on the elites right now. It is a very different political strategy and implies a different agenda.”
That strategy would have to wait 20 years to come to fruition. The story next time, in part 2.
f https://religionnews.com/2022/02/21/from-new-christian-right-to-christian-nationalism-part-1/