Moore tells how one night he saw Steve Forbes while he was watching Nightline. Ted Koppel had asked Forbes a question and Moore realized that during the minute and a half Forbes took to answer it, he never blinked once.

Next he watched him on CNN, "and there he was, doing it again—NOT BLINKING!"

He called his wife into the room to verify his perceptions. She did.

"No, he's not blinking," Moore then replied, "And he won't. Now now, not ever! He's not human!"

If throwing one's hope towel into the camp of the religious right qualifies Forbes for alien status, there seems little doubt that Moore's perceptions are on track. TIME says the heir to the Forbes fortune, a persistent presidential hopeful, blamed his loss to Bob Dole on the machinations of the religious right in the last Republican presidential primaries. This time around he wants the forefathers of right-wing religious fundamentalism on his side.

Steve Forbes' closeted dad, Malcolm, outed after his death by columnist/ author Michelangelo Signorile, might wonder at a male date his son had as recently as June after he accepted a ride in a black Chevolet Suburban from the Reverend Louis Sheldon, founder of the Traditional Values Coalition. Sheldon's reputation as an evangelist for homophobia puts him in the top tier of bigotry's choir loft.

It is reported that their conversation very much included same-sex passions. Sheldon was at first skeptical of Forbes' advances, but then, presumably as they rode about in the Suburban, Sheldon opened up wide and admitted that he and Forbes had had a grand time together. "We were chatting away like two old cousins," he told the press.

Now, it is said, Forbes may begin quoting John the Baptist instead of John Adams. Forbes obsession with flat taxes seems to have gone flat while instead he steadily inflates social issues—free choice, same-sex love, and medically assisted suicide— the perpetual bogeys of religious zealots from Anchorage to Miami

Forbes is also having a good time with Beverly LaHaye, founder of Concerned Women for America. "He sounded like a concerned dad," she gushed.

Jerry Falwell, however, is quoted in TIME as being hot to trot for Forbes even more than are LaHaye or Sheldon. "I've listened carefully and been very attracted to him," blabs Falwell. TIME magazine also tells how Forbes "courted" Falwell "on three separate occasions."

Forbes, an Episcopalian, is using his money to sway undecided Senators into supporting the reproductive philosophies of religious conservatives, although he still refuses, at present, to push for a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion altogether. He does insist, however, that life begins at conception, allowing thereby that abortion is murder.

Next week's Policy Review will publish an essay by Steve Forbes, to give focus to his revamped crusade on behalf of conservative religious issues. It will be called "The Moral Basis of a Free Society."

Ralph Reed gets particularly excited when he thinks about Forbes. "What you're seeing is a work in progress," he exults as he watches Forbes' standing rise.