"What you're seeing is the rift between the Religious and non-Religious Right."
That oversimplifies it, as there are people in the right who are religious, but who don't believe that the government ought to be interfering in certain matters, this is the camp that I fall in
The old definition of conservative is someone who believes in as little government interference in anything as is possible.
You know, during the 1920s, in Alabama no less, the people who were on the "conservative" side of politics, were the wets, the businessmen, basically, what Graves ended up calling the "Big Mules", people who believed in the old Bourbon idea that no government was good government
The left in this state consisted of the League of Women Voters, Organized Labor, Evangelical Protestants, and the Ku Klux Klan (I'll explain that one later)
The thing that has changed in this state since the 20s is that we now have two parties, and, we now also have big government wings in both parties
Good point, and sorry for the oversimplification.
Ku Klux Klan (I'll explain that one later)
Yeah, from vestiges of the Civil War, right? The Democrats used to be the party of unreconstructed Southerners, due to the South's bitterness at the party of Abraham Lincoln. Stayed that way until Nixon's "Southern Strategy", which largely gave us the political map we see today.