Southerners abandoned the Democratic party over the issue of racial equality. The change was swift and mostly complete before the rust belt '70s, the BIGGEST factors in the changing economic situation of manufacturing workers were technological.

Reagan directed the attack on labor with great success, trying to dismiss the political divide generated through religion (abortion) and guns as "social policies" is ignoring some very basic facts of American culture in politics.

The religious "freedom" you mention is the freedom to discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex and gender status, and if you really want to understand the ongoing political divide in the U.S. you need only overlay a map of the Confederacy and the "red states".