Moral Majority Becomes the Tea Party - Chris Ladd

http://www.frumforum.com/the-moral-majority-becomes-the-tea-party

This is a fascinating article that answers the question "how does an Ayn Rand devotee like Rand Paul get elected by religious conservatives?" The answer: a bizarre alliance between the libertarians and the religious right, neither of which want to see effective governance, but a collapse of the effectiveness of the government itself to aid the collapse of the culture behind it.
The religious right, motivated by cultural backlash against "moral decline" in America, formed the Moral Majority to carry on the culture war through government, only to find that they could conservatives, but never conservatives that would enact their radical agenda.
Disillusioned, some of them simply resolved to overthrow the culture itself by attacking individuals and institutions that they saw as conduits for left wing thought and/or cultural decline. The second prong of their attack, the election of religious conservatives, sought purity over competence because the loss of faith in government was simply another facet of their quest to discredit government, as well as the culture, itself. It didn't matter if you were good, only that you were pure.
The libertarians are, for obvious reasons, on board. They see in the Tea Party, formerly the Moral Majority, a useful band of idiots that will bring about the end of effective government, allowing their distopian paradise to spring to life.
This unholy alliance gave birth to Rand Paul, one of a wave of  "libertarians (who) could actually win elections, so long as they were willing to embrace a deeply Southern re-branding of the philosophy". By essentially faking their Christian credentials (lying for gain is no sin in the Objectivist philosphy) they see they can gain power quite easily, aided by the Establishment Republicans even as they purged their ranks.
Now I see the significance of Glenn Beck in the larger picture. Not quite a libertarian, definitely a charlatan, but a man who struck a chord and decided to fool his followers all the way to the bank.