“In this case, you have a movement that has so totally embraced a particular political party, that it’s willing to go along with any outrage as long as it’s within the tent of party.”

That was Randall Ballmer, identified as a “historian of American religion,” trying to explain to the Boston Globe “why” evangelicals are standing behind Roy Moore. Ballmer was trying to paint the entire conservative movement as selling its soul for a Senate seat (ignoring the anti-Moore conservatives), but his point was a perfect critique if you applied it narrowly to the politicized evangelical religious Right.