The GOP isn't about to die out

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The terms often used to describe Republicans were that they were too pious and righteous. Ironically, for a Southern based party at the time to level such a charge like the Democrats did, this was a common refrain going back to the days of Jefferson and Adams where Jefferson was accused of being an atheist. There are also numerous references to the heritage of Salem Witch trials, which the GOP's opponents claimed the party inherited. From its birth, the Republicans have been defined by its opponents for Puritanical and Calvinistic excesses. The exception, not the rule, was the period between 1930 and 1970.

Reagan didn't build the three legged stool, he repaired and restored it.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

When was the last time the GOP didn't have a STAUNCHLY socially conservative wing?  This isn't new, and it won't ever go away...

They were never as dominant as they are now.

Except for that whole "Founded to fight the moral evil of slavery" thing..

A lot of the socially liberal attitudes out of the 19th century came from a religious view on things.

Religion was kind of a factor in both social liberalism and conservatism then.

You have a very frustrating view of faith in politics. "When religious people do good things, they're being liberal. When they do bad things, they're being conservative."

The great, social conservative evil that is the pro-life movement is condemned by liberals for "legislating their morality." Republicans have always done this, from our founding. The fight against slavery was the beginning of our fight to "legislate our morality" onto others. The ideological heritage is clear.

That's not really how I think at all. The prohibition movement, for example, was a Progressive position to hold

The vast bulk of support for Prohibitionism in the Democratic Party came from people who also supported the KKK. They also really liked Woodrow Wilson. Of course the dark history of Progressivism in the Democratic Party is heavily connected and tainted by such seedy connections in the early 20th Century.

Eugenics was also considered progressive. Unreastrained industrial expansion was considered progressivism by those who promoted it. Progressivism is not an ideology it is the achievement of a step in the road to a desired end goal. What are you heading towards is what matters. Is is it a white supremacist soceity where protestant Sudden men reclaim their leadership of the country from ills of catholic micks and Italians? Is it the purfication of society from the sins of devil rum and the restoration of Protestant Christian virtue from the pollution of Catholic vice and societal deteriation?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

So Yankee, you're basically saying that Baptists are to the GOP now what Calvinists and Congregationalists were a century ago?

You must consider that the Civil War also split the churches as well. Presbyterians and Baptists were Democratic in the South, but I would hazard a guess they weren't quite so monolithic in the North. I really prefer to avoid getting into the weeds of religious groups and their differences, but aside from wealth and geography religion was more factor the broke down along party lines where there party lines to be drawn (since the South did not have parties it had factions within the Democratic Party at that time).