Republicans have been running on social conservative issues like abortion and gay marriage for so long, that low-income white Christian voters in the Deep South (despite the lack of progress any Republicans have actually made on such issues) have begun to assume Republicans are correct on everything. As we saw in the recent Tennessee Volkswagen plant, legions of poor white Southerners are super anti-union, oppose minimum wage increases, support tax cuts for the rich, etc., and a whole host of policies that are flagrantly against their own interest simply because they have been fooled into thinking the anti-abortion party must be right on everything.
This is the truth. After all, if the Republicans are Godly and Holy in their opposition to abortion and gay marriage, why wouldn't they be infallibly correct about unions and tax cuts for the rich too? Running populists won't help convert them, they've been indoctrinated into the GOP economic agenda through their religious beliefs.
