by Patrick J. Buchanan

Four weeks before New Hampshire and three weeks before the Iowa caucuses, the Republican race has become a proxy religious war.

On one side is a Baptist preacher who called homosexuality “an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle” that “can pose a dangerous public health risk,” urged the isolation of AIDS sufferers and declared in 1998 that we must “answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.”

On the other is a devout Mormon whose finest hour was last week’s televised address in which he refused to back away from any precept of his faith but affirmed: “Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind.”