The Republican consensus on Israel is starting to fracture

The Republican Party’s powerful alliance with Israel — repeatedly reaffirmed during President Donald Trump’s second term — is rooted in conservative Christianity’s rise as a political force more than half a century ago. The Reverend Billy Graham’s relationship with President Richard Nixon helped bring evangelical politics into the White House. Graham later regretted his political entanglement, particularly after Watergate, but the opening remained. In the late 1970s, Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority mobilised conservative evangelicals into a potent Republican constituency that Ronald Reagan incorporated into his conservative coalition.