Not disagreeing, but this comes from further back than a decade. It goes all the way at the very least to Gingrich, when Republicans locked on the religious vote by attacking the "immoral conduct" of Bill Clinton. It worked so well that they've made it a structural element of their strategies. You can see the traces of this even in the political allegory of clintonism that is The West Wing - this episode was filmed in year 2000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3VHK1NXIBw