Here is a fascinating analysis of trends in the right, especially focused on why Protestant Evangelicals are suddenly aligning themselves with Roman Catholics. Here is an excerpt:
To understand what is going on, we need to move from the role of Catholic individuals to a broader, more metaphorical idea of a Catholic style of political reasoning. "Catholic" in this exercise means responding to leadership; focusing on outcomes (think "doctrine of works"); and a Manichean view of the world in which the Church -- as opposed to mere churches -- stands as a bulwark against equally great opposing forces, so that outside the Church there can be only chaos. In this sense a Catholic Republican voter would be someone looking for a commanding general to lead Christian soldiers on a crusade, would care about a candidate's policies rather than his soul, and respond to a call to view the Republican Party as the last bastion of civilisation in a howling wilderness. Extending the metaphor, a "Protestant" conservative should reject the idea of leaders in favour of grass roots communalism; local self-direction in the congregationalist model; care about character and personal values more than specific stances or doctrines; and see the world as a mass of sinners who are to be judged individually by the quality of their soul rather than by their enlistment in one party or the other.
In this metaphorical sense, the "Catholic" political style is strongest among evangelical Protestant voters, not actual Catholics. The eagerness of Catholic bishops to jump into a fight over contraception, for example, does not reflect that attitudes of their parishoners, but it gets strong support from evangelicals. Similarly, in one recent poll more than two-thirds of Catholic voterssupported some sort of legal recognition of gay couples' relationships, with 44% favoring same-sex marriage; in very sharp contrast, an outright majority of evangelical voters said there should be no legal recognition of a same-sex relationship.
In political terms, the evangelical Protestant Right has become Catholicized.
Maybe this also helps to explain why I ultimately had to leave the GOP myself?
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