The Teflon Twins of 1988

Imagine the uproar if a television tape were discovered in which, say, Bob Dole argued that only devout Christians and Jews were entitled to serve in government.

Dole, of course, has never said anything like that. But his G.O.P. rival Pat Robertson made precisely that inflammatory statement in a 1985 broadcast of his 700 Club TV show. Robertson compounded the offense last fall by piously insisting that he had never harbored such sentiments, defiantly at odds with the constitutional tradition of separating church and state.

A month before the Iowa caucuses, has there been any outcry over Robertson's TV tape? Not...