Ayn Rand's philosophy: The other secular humanism

I have to wonder if Rand's rising stock among conservatives derives from the same social processes which have led to the decline of American religiosity in general. American conservatives often come from business backgrounds, so from hindsight they might have emphasized religion in the latter 20th Century as a branding strategy to distinguish conservatism from the alternative world view promoted by the Soviet Union, not because conservatism necessarily requires belief in supernaturals. With the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union, and the conversion of communist China into a more bourgeois sort of country, conservatives who don't organically view the world in religious ways may feel freer to tolerate, if not share, Rand's atheism.