emphasize very strongly beliefs that people who do right are rewarded and those who do not are punished.
Yes, you do hear a whole lot fewer "what would Jesus do"s these days. At least I do and suspect a great deal of defiance and adjusted understandings of Jesus's teachings behind it, but not rejection.
Conservatives naturally tend to a gut belief in a natural order that rewards good behaviors and punish bad behaviors. This has also been a major part of Christian doctrine (and other religions) for many centuries. Christianity's god may have become a loving father in more recent ones, but serene acceptance of even viciously severe punishments for people who sin is deeply inculcated.
Who hasn't heard "why me?" dozens of times? It comes from people who believe in their guts that when cancer, a child's death, unemployment or economic disasters hit others they are usually deserved in some way, that even good people must have done something wrong or god wouldn't let it happen.
Now add in this reality: By personality alone, before environmental religious factors kick in, conservative brains are genetically wired to have a darker view of humanity than liberal brains are. Very generally speaking, liberals tend to believe people will mostly be good on their own. Conservatives know they will not.
Conservatives today believe more than ever, courtesy of mass manipulation, that government programs that keep people from experience the consequences of sinning encourage bad behaviors (not entirely irrationally--they can and do in some cases) on disastrous nationwide and biblical scales that will eventually destroy whole societies around the planet. With the help of anxiety-fanning manipulators, most believe we are witnessing just that happen and are voting to save themselves and everyone else.
Not excusing so many following demons far off the path of righteousness, only saying that to most it still looks like that.
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