Red on Fred: The knives are out about Thompson's faith (UPDATED)

I was going to lauch a big ol' thermobaric rant about James Dobson's ill-considered remarks today. But there's no shortage of anger or ranting on the web right now, so perhaps the best thing for me to do is let this one cool off.

I will say that I had anticipated an attack on Fred's faith; I figured the day after he announced, some egghead at Salon.com would turn in a thousand poisonous words about the Church of Christ, into which Fred was baptized. Instead, the knife in the back came from his erstwhile ally on the right.

Thompson ought to respond to this slight. Dobson has alienated a lot of people with his comment and he's also set up the biggest Sistah Souljah moment of the upcoming race. Fred ought to use this as a chance to talk about his faith, and also to differentiate himself from shrill voices like Falwell and Dobson.

UPDATE, 3/31: Dobson has apologized...well, his remarks and those of his spokesmen. This is one of the rare times I'm going to disagree with JYB founder Bryan Preston about this issue--I think at best Dobson handled this very badly, and had to issue several unclear clarifications before he said something plausible. Bryan's right that you should always triple-check anything controversial in the MSM about major religious figures, especially evangelical leaders like Dobson. But as I said in a comment at that post,

Note back in the original article that Gilgoff allowed [FiF spokesman Gary] Schneeberger to follow up on something Dobson said that he thought was unusual. That’s more thoroughness and courtesy than most MSM reporters would give Dobson in a similar situation.

Unfortunately, if that’s an accurate quote (and this latest defense doesn’t deny it) Schneeberger complicated things even more. ...[T]his wasn’t a matter of trusting what the MSM says about Dobson. This is a matter of trusting what his own people said he meant–which was quite reasonable to do, for the MSM or for hair-trigger bloggers like myself who were upset by the slam.

Incidentally, I noticed that when the third clarification came out, the new spokesperson was identified as “Nima Reza“, [but] the suspicion was still there–he “professes to be a believer”. I think that’s either redundant or skeptical–one step short of “claims to be”. He’s a believer. He maybe as much a Church of Christ saint as Rudy is a good Catholic, he may have faith but not works, he may never go to church, but there’s something there.

And by the way, I think Dobson hasn't endorsed Newt Gingrich the same way Hugh Hewitt hasn't endorsed Mitt Romney.