Really? I mean, there was both a Christian right - which voted GOP back then - and Reagan Democrats back in the 80's. A lot of those Reagan Democrats were Catholic, too.
The Southern Strategy... Most of the South universally converted to Republican or leaning Republican during the Reagan years. Abortion was the hot-button, with an undercurrent of the general decadence invading polite society.
Mr. Reagan invited the Christians to the Conservative table... and it worked... With much higher Republican numbers in the South and Midwest... To a lesser degree in the more libertarian West and Southwest (which largely voted Republican/Libertarian already).
Now the South (and the Midwest) generally votes Republican.
That is not to say that Christians were unrepresented in Conservatism... Until that time, Christian morality was not questioned within political circles... Till liberal feminism drove no fault divorce, and abortion, and the hippie movement drove drugs and fornication into a position that morals required defending in a political way. The crux of that, and the appeal to Christians became the spear point for the Southern Strategy... It's how Reagan won, and Reaganism became the the genesis of modern Conservatism, picking up where Goldwater failed.
That was simply by adding SOCON to the already existing FICON/DEFCON factions within political Conservatism.
