U.S. News and World Report confirmed this view last week in an article titled “Republicans Scared Silly”. Earlier, anti-gay Focus on the Family religious politico, James Dobson, had trudged up to Capitol Hill to tell Republican Congressmen they’d better get behind his sex-control program or he’d put a hex on the Republican party and remove the religious support he and others have, for years, provided for the GOP. 

In the wake of Dobson’s unsettling threats Time Magazine reported that Republican leaders have been trying to formulate a “Dobsonesque” message to “placate” those dogmatists and zealots who are the demagogue’s faithful followers. 

But the danger posed by James Dobson and the Christian right to Republicans, says Time, “became clear” when GOP Jon Christensen was defeated May 12 in a primary race for governor’s seat in Nebraska, a race indicating that Nebraska voters, at least, are not tied to James Dobson’s apron strings. 

Dobson had heartily endorsed Christensen who, according to Time, “could have been bred in Dobson’s lab…Christensen touted Dobson’s endorsement in his ads, but the GOP star tanked at 28% (and wept like a baby), upset by the moderate (Lincoln Mayor Mike) Johanns, who pointedly criticized Christensen for his homophobia.” 

Time asked “Could people be seeing that the Christian right is not very Christian?  The Golden Rule does not include gay bashing and divisiveness.” 

Concluding, Time reports that James Dobson is now “boosting” ex-Congressman Bob Dornan “the loudest, loosest cannon in all the right wing, who is running again for the California seat he has yet to concede he lost in 1996.” 

Newt Gingrich, who is currently attempting to soften his harsh and unfriendly public image, may be slow, some think, to offer his aid to the Dornan campaign. Time taunts the Republican leader saying “If in Nebraska the new family values seems to be tolerance, lets see if Newt goes to California to help (Dornan).” 

Another “religious-political” test is shaping up in Alabama in a Republican primary race between Ralph Reed-backed Governor Fob James, Jr. and a moderate Republican, Winton Blount 3rd, a well-to-do Montgomery businessman who has the enthusiastic support of the state’s business community. 

Governor James has thrown his considerable weight against the time-honored American tradition of the separation of church and state. He is crusading not only against personal choice and reproductive freedom, but for the blatant use of sectarian religious symbols in public buildings and for school prayers. 

Governor James did major damage to his own campaign last month when he cursed and was caught by TV cameras doing so. He was signing a bill requiring silent reflection at the start of each school day.  Many conservative Christians saw this “slip” as a cursed sign of hypocrisy. 

Former Christian Coalition director, the baby-faced Ralph Reed, who is advising incumbent James in his run for re-election, says “It’s become a race about a set of issues that if it is rejected in a Republican primary will be a major setback to the pro-family movement across America.” 

Beneath these Alabama-bred issues, not surprisingly, is a hidden anti-gay platform that has not, as yet, surfaced as a major campaign issue. Alabama’s business community is rallying behind Blount, who, it is believed, will help discard the state’s longtime image as a backward locale, showing that Alabama is ready for the 21st century as a livable part of the new South. 

In the 1960s Alabama Governor George C. Wallace achieved notoriety by promising racial “segregation forever”.  Today, Governor James follows in Wallace’s footsteps, although the issue is no longer race but religion.