I think it's pretty clear that Reagan wanted the votes of religious conservatives, but I've seen scant evidence he was a religious conservative, or that he led as one.
Fine, then what you're admitting that being opposed to abortion doesn't make you a "religious conservative." Because Reagan was strongly pro-life, he even wrote an anti-abortion book while he was president ("Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation"). That didn't make him a "religious conservative." I don't want a "religious conservative" as our nominee, but I DO want a Reaganite, and that means someone who's conservative on social as well as economic and defense issues.
It wasn't until the GOP added social conservativism to its platform that it becamse a majority party. Before Reagan came along and added pro-life to the party's small-government platform, the GOP was the minority party. Reagan added the social traditionalists - that was a big share of the "Reagan Democrats". The pre-Reagan GOP "leaders" like Ford didn't like broadening the GOP tent to include these folks -- but that's why Ford lost and Reagan won. Now we've got Rudy-fans who want to go back to the Gerald Ford days, the days when the GOP snubbed the social conservatives - and lost.