With Good Reason
I can image Thomas Frank reading about conservative Christians criticizing the GOP evoking a classic Bart Simpson “Duh!”
There is a very good reason why Republicans have not made any real moves on the far right’s key issues: they’re oppressive. Christian conservatives want less freedom because they believe it is immorale - less speach (obscenity), less love (gay marriage) and less choice (abortion). Their platform is that everyone should live life based on what the religious right believes. That is exactly the reason the majority of the Republican party, as happy as they are to milk their votes, does nothing about it.
Everyone else in the country disagrees with them. If the GOP started legislating far right they would be out of office (and in court) next election. The right wing may swing the vote but the line between having a left based party in control and a right based party is not that wide. The GOP are just settling in to their second decade of power after being the minority for the previous four. Now is not the time to start telling the voters that their America is no longer the land of the free.