It was also calculated for that purpose.

"The GOP’s Southern Strategy initiated the realignment of the South with the Republican Party by exploiting white racial anxiety about social changes to the southern racial hierarchy. However, the GOP’s success was not solely the result of its policy position on civil rights. Rather, that decision was part of a series of decisions the party made on feminism and religion as well, in what is called here the “Long Southern Strategy.” White resentment toward a more level racial playing field, for example, was intensified by the threat of a level gender playing field, and the promotion of “family values” by anti-feminists paved the way for the Christian Right. Moreover, Republican candidates did not just campaign down South, they became “southern.” Throughout realignment, the power of southern identity was rarely taken into consideration, but for whites who proclaim themselves to be southern, that has been the only party that really mattered." https://academic.oup.com/book/35313/chapter-abstract/299959321?redirectedFrom=fulltext

It was, essentially, a way to cloak the animus toward the poor and the not-white and the immigrant, and the endless tax breaks for the rich, in the appearance of moral rectitude. Cloaked as the party of "family values" and decency, they cast liberals, progressives, and democrats as morally bankrupt — which today has morphed into cast us as evil.