Why don't Republicans go after the Atheist vote?

[A Theist]

1) Atheists are still a hated minority; it doesn't serve any party's interest to embrace a minority hated by the majority,
2) Atheists don't form a cohesive voting bloc (herding cats, etc)
3) atheists don't have readily identifiable ideological leaders, so access is problematic
4) atheist's voting behavior is likely more reliably predicted by other demographic identifications (black, Hispanic, poor), and so you'd essentially be spending the same dollar twice (with less purchasing power) going after them
5) belief in their own propaganda; I think it's a common perception on the right that there does not exist a large contingent of dedicated atheists (much less the 'non-affiliated'), so for the conservative, the atheist pie simply isn't big enough or significant enough,
6) they already have strong ties to people of faith, who form a larger voting bloc, and whose affections would likely be estranged by openly courting atheists,
7) Atheists and atheism generally leads to controversy and conflict in a largely religious society, something which any politician (or business) would do well to distance themselves from,

One thing on your list that I take issue with is that Atheists (or other non-religious) don't vote as a bloc. I think they vote Democratic (or not at all.) If you look at these boards, you scarcely see a Republican Atheist (Tino) and a plethora of Democrats and some apathetic libertarians. Some of it seems to simply be because of Republican hostility. Strategically they might manage to drop that hostility from their platform and keep the religious vote. Karl Rove himself is 'not a person of faith' after all. Also the ties to religion doesn't particularly seem to be working, especially with an aging electorate.

"One thing on your list that I take issue with is that Atheists (or other non-religious) don't vote as a bloc."....I have to agree with Apophenia, "Atheists don't form a cohesive voting bloc"...if the large part of atheists are voting Democrat, (like other lefties), it's not because of atheist political interests, it's because they're leftists and are more interested in rallying around other issues of political / socio interests, like gay marriage and abortion, i.e.

"If you look at these boards, you scarcely see a Republican Atheist (Tino) and a plethora of Democrats and some apathetic libertarians."....If you look at these boards you scarcely see a Republican at all, period....at first I thought that there were three Republicans on this forum, but now it looks like it's only Tino and myself who are the only two....though Tino and I don't agree over the existence of God, we do agree politically and we're both Republicans.

"Some of it seems to simply be because of Republican hostility."....Have you actually noticed at all if the Democrats are actively campaigning to court the atheist vote? When the Democrats were going to strike a reference to God from the party platform at their convention, it raised such a furor that Barack and other influential Dems got involved and retained the God reference in the party platform for fear of losing black and latino votes....so you really can't say that the Democrats are particularly atheist friendly either.

"...and the fact that young people are overwhelmingly more secular and less Christian than their parents,..."...maybe so, but that doesn't mean they're particularly interested in being part of an atheist voting block...they seem to be more interested in which party is going to promise to pay for their student loans.