Sam Bee Takes Us Through the Rise and Fall of the Religious Right

Samantha Bee devoted a segment of her show Monday night to a history lesson — and scorching ridicule — of the Religious Right movement in American politics.

“For a generation, they’ve been like a wasp in an airplane. They’re small and outnumbered, but everyone still has to avoid pissing them off,” Bee said.

The lecture begins by describing how the GOP “harnessed the voting power of evangelicals to the conservative Republican cause” by rallying around their resistance to integration in schools (“Don’t worry, gays,” Bee quipped, “they’ll get to you — you’re just harder to spot.”)

Bee outlines how party officials spent the next three decades cannily courting Christians by welding the GOP platform to social issues and convincing evangelicals that voting red was the most important thing they could do — after being saved, of course.

Bee concludes her discourse with a pithy description of how the “Religious Right has been losing ground for 15 years,” concluding with the movement being unseated from the party center by the ascendance of Donald Trump.

“Old-fashioned values voters no longer have the clout to get their vat-monster the nomination, much less the Oval Office” she said, referring to Ted Cruz. “And the new evangelicals are happy to ditch the Bible for good old white nativism and anti-government anger. Hey! Just like you taught them!”

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