The Evangelicals were always there, the whole time. Bush wasn't shy about talking about god and crusades and shit. The loud anti-Islamic psuedointellectuals were just politically useful at the time so they got a lot of air play. Remember Terry Schiavo and the shitfit about turning off the life support of a brain dead person with no chance of recovery? All driven by Evangelicals during the critical early years of the GWOT. If you lived outside major democratic cities they were just as omnipresent, violent, and oppressive as they are now.