Our guest blogger is Jack Jenkins, a Writer and Researcher with the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative.

When election returns began pouring in on Tuesday, progressives were quick to declare the election a resounding victory for President Obama, Democratic candidates, and progressive ideals such as marriage equality and the DREAM Act. A deeper look at Tuesday’s results reveals that the 2012 election season was also a resounding defeat for the political engine that has long catapulted the GOP to power: The Religious Right.

Here five ways the Religious Right imploded during the 2012 election:

1) Evangelicals failed to produce a viable candidate. While Rick Perry looked to be the evangelical darling in the early days of the Republican primary, his various “oops” moments forced evangelical Protestants to flock to Rick Santorum, a conservative Catholic. But while Santorum won the support of many evangelicals, his passionate embrace of evangelical positions on abortion and contraception made him unappealing to many women voters. In the end, the machinery of the Religious Right failed to produce a candidate that fired up conservative Protestants, forcing the Romney campaign to work twice as hard to excite the GOP’s evangelical base.

2) Conservative efforts to shift the Catholic vote flopped. After the Obama administration announced the HHS contraceptive coverage requirement earlier this year, the United States Council of Catholic Bishops launched a “Fortnight for Freedom” campaign criticizing the Obama administration and urging Catholics to cast their votes in support of “religious freedom.” The effort failed miserably: Not only did Obama win the Catholic vote overall in 2012 (50% of Catholics voted for Obama while 48% supported Romney), but Pew Research found that the vast majority of American Catholics (78%) knew little to nothing about the bishop’s expensive campaign. Instead, Catholic voters appeared more supportive of the efforts of Sister Simone Campbell and the Nuns on the Bus who spoke out against Paul Ryan’s budget.

3) Evangelical voter turnout efforts fell short. Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition targeted Ohio this year in an effort to increase evangelical turnout, promising to go “all in” by sending voter guides to churches and launching a “major push” to get evangelicals to the polls through a robust get-out-the-vote effort. But when the results came in on Tuesday, Obama had actually performed better among white evangelicals in Ohio than he did in 2008: White evangelicals in Ohio favored John McCain by a 71%-27% margin in 2008, but favored Romney by a smaller margin – 69%-30% – in 2012. Despite all the energy expended by the Religious Right, their turnout efforts failed to have any marked impact on the most crucial state of the general election.

4) Traditionally evangelical candidates lost en masse because of radical views and bad theology. Conservative Christian and then-Missouri Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin caused a stir within the Republican Party when he spoke about “legitimate rape,” but evangelical leaders were quick to come to his aid. But when Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who attends an evangelical church, referred to women impregnated through rape as having been given “a gift from God,” voters across the country – including many evangelicals – began asking questions about this new breed of politician. Ultimately, voters decided that Akin and Mourdock’s radical theology was simply too extreme: They and several like-minded candidates suffered a series of staggering defeats all across the country on Tuesday.

5) The efforts of anti-gay religious leaders didn’t stop voters from supporting marriage equality. When marriage equality amendments were put on the ballot in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington this year, conservative Christian groups moved quickly to try and dissuade people from supporting the freedom to marry. Famed evangelist Billy Graham even launched a massive “Vote Biblical Values” ad campaign, which, among other things, urged voters to oppose candidates who supported marriage equality. Undaunted, pro-marriage equality activists capitalized on groundswells of support among religious groups and ran ads featuring pastors and other religious leaders passionately endorsing same-sex marriage. In the end, Americans voted in favor of marriage equality in three (and probably four) states, dealing a resounding defeat to the anti-gay bastions of the Religious Right.

The 2012 election season appears to have been an ominous one for the Religious Right, and – if the trend continues – may very well signal the end of their traditional dominance of Republican politics. Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family, has already voiced the opinion that the Religious Right is hemorrhaging support across the country, and should put less focus on abortion and gay marriage and give more attention to issues such as immigration reform, poverty, and increasing adoptions and foster care opportunities. Whether or not religious conservatives can make that shift remains to be seen, but, in the meantime, the Religious Right looks to have already lost persuasive power with many American voters.

The 2012 House and Senate races were to a significant degree about the GOP’s shift to the far right of the American historical norm — assaults on the fundamentals of the social safety net unseen since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, unprecedented attempts to restrict women’s reproductive freedom, and near-theological devotion to lowering tax rates for top earners beyond their already-historic lows. But a major trend in Tuesday’s elections was a rejection of many of the Congressional aspirants who most famously embodied these ideas. Here’s six of the candidates closely aligned with the extreme elements in the Republican Party who went down to defeat:

HOUSE: Joe Walsh, Illinois

Rep. Walsh is perhaps the most famous of the Republican class of 2010 — one observer labelled him “the biggest media hound in the freshman class.” Walsh’s means of getting attention was principally his hardest of right policy positions and a series of outlandish, offensive statements. Walsh was one of the leading opponents of raising the debt ceiling despite the catastrophic consequences of not doing so, an issue that will be coming up again in the near future. He also claimed President Obama was only elected because “he pushed that magical button: a black man who was articulate, liberal, the whole white guilt, all of that” and argued that welfare was “destructive” for the poor people it helps. Walsh was defeated by Iraq war veteran and amputee Tammy Duckworth, whom he had insinuated wasn’t a “true hero” and described her record as “Female, wounded veteran … ehhh.”

SENATE: Richard Mourdock, Indiana

State Treasurer Mourdock epitomizes the process by which the Tea Party has come to control the GOP Congressional caucus, taking out incumbent moderate Sen. Richard Lugar in a bitterly contested primary. Unlike his predecessor, who was famous for working with then-Senator Obama on foreign policy issues, Mourdock appears not to believe in real bipartisanship – he thinks “bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view.” It seems unlikely, however, that Democrats will want to come around to Mourdock’s positions — he is now infamous for claiming that a rape pregnancy “a gift from God…something God intended to happen” to justify his maximalist anti-choice position and refusing to apologize for the remarks.

HOUSE: Allen West, Florida

Rep. West may have even Walsh beat for most inflammatory member of the House. He has called for the censorship of American newspapers, said feminism and liberal women were “neutering” America’s men, claimed the FBI was committing “cultural suicide” by removing Islamophobic material from its training courses, and has compared progressives to both Nazis and Stalinists. And that’s just scratching the surface of West bombast, a pattern so outlandish that he became a media fixture despite an almost non-existent record of passing legislation.

SENATE: Todd Akin, Missouri

“If it’s a legitimate rape,” Rep. Akin infamously intoned in August, “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Akin’s remarks kicked off 2012′s string of offensive comments about rape by GOP candidates, partly as a consequence of the fact that Akin had worked with Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan to make it such that Medicaid would only cover “forcible rape.” Akin also has been linked to a “Christian supremacist” preacher with disturbing views on rape and abortion and believes Medicare is unconstitutional. Though Akin was widely believed to be a heavy favorite before the “legitimate rape” comments, he was beaten handily by incumbent Senator Clare McCaskill (D).

SENATE: George Allen, Virginia

Former Senator Allen first lost his job in 2006, when he referred to an Indian-American campaign staffer as “macaca.” Though Allen tried to play down that incident, he has a long history of racial trouble — declaring Confederate history month as VA governor without mentioning slavery, stereotyping reporters, and reportedly demonstrating flatly racist attitudes during his football playing days. Allen also has a viciously anti-gay record: among other things, he has called for criminalizing gay sex. Finally, according to the League of Conservation Voters, Allen has “one of the worst environmental records ever,” something probably not unrelated to the fact that he’s in bed with the country’s worst corporations on the environment.

SENATE: Denny Rehberg, Montana

Less famous than the other names on this list, Rep. Rehberg is nonetheless quite representative of standard views in the GOP Congressional delegation. Rehberg believes taking health care away from the poor is the “most common sense path” to reducing the deficit, introduced legislation to ban the United Nations from stealing American guns, and sponsored a bill that blocked access to birth control and defunded Planned Parenthood. Rehberg also has a long and unbroken history of anti-gay activism.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) became the most prominent Republican to call on Indiana senate candidate Richard Mourdock to apologize for claiming, during a debate on Tuesday night, that pregnancies resulting from rape are a “gift from God.” The Arizona senator told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Wednesday night that he would withhold his support until Mourdock “apologizes and says he misspoke, and he was wrong and he asks the people to forgive him”:

Like Mitt Romney, McCain endorsed and campaigned for Mourdock, though the GOP presidential candidate has yet to pull his ad touting the Indiana state treasurer or explicitly renounce him.

Mourdock refused to apologize for his comments in a press conference earlier today.

Polls show President Obama leading Romney among women by an average of 9 points.