Republican voters really will believe anything if it's uttered by or on behalf of someone they think has the ability to kick liberal/immigrant/Muslim ass:

Donald Trump: Born-again Christian?

The presumptive Republican nominee captured a significant number of evangelical voters during the Republican primary, and that may be due to recently accepting “a relationship with Christ,” according to evangelical leader James Dobson.

... Dobson, a Christian psychologist and founder of the Focus on the Family group, said he knows “the person who led [Trump] to Christ. And that’s fairly recent.”

“I don’t know when it was, but it has not been long,” Dobson said in an interview with Pennsylvania megachurch pastor Michael Anthony following that meeting in New York. ”I believe he really made a commitment, but he’s a baby Christian.”

Yeah, and I am Marie of Roumania.

I'm sure I've said this before, but the guy who really underestimated the ability of Republicans to accept a completely phony conversion to religious right values is Rudy Giuliani. I still think he would have been the Republican nominee in 2008 if he'd announced, some time in 2006 or 2007, that he'd suddenly seen the light on abortion and gay rights, and now unswervingly opposed both. Look what's happened in the last two election cycles: The Republicans have nominated Mitt Romney, a moderate on social issues when he was governor of Massachusetts, and Trump, a libertine who was also not an opponent of abortion or gay rights until it became politically expedient.

Why didn't Giuliani flip-flop on these issues in '08? Was it integrity on his part? I doubt it -- I assume he just thought he was such an American hero after 9/11 that he could defy party dogma.

Romney, at least, seemed to be reverting to the tenets of his faith. Trump is transparently phony -- but because religious rightists think he can smite liberals, most of them doesn't care. Giuliani probably didn't think he could get away with fraud that flagrant. Now he knows that gulling voters in his party is ridiculously easy.

Crossposted at No More Mr.Nice Blog