It's hard to read the story about Howard Ahmanson's switchover from being a registered Republican to a registered Democrat without doing a certified Jerry Lewis bug-eyed double take.  

Apparently, however, the only issue where he has had a change of heart is taxes. All of his other beliefs, particularly on social issues, appear to be intact.

Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker wrote this in the Washington Post:

In a rare interview Thursday, Ahmanson shared some of his thoughts about why he switched parties. In a word, taxes.

Specifically, he was offended by the California Republican Party's insistence during a recent state budget battle that there would be no tax increases for any reason, no matter what. "They're providing one issue and it's just a very silly issue," Ahmanson told me by telephone.

So, Ahmanson printed out an online form and mailed in his Democratic Party registration. Thus far, he's heard nothing back, but confesses to hoping he'll receive a little card or something.

Ahmanson, who was born to and inherited great wealth, has spent a lifetime trying to figure out what to do with his good fortune. It has been, at times, a burden of guilt, complicated by a lonely childhood. He also has Tourette's syndrome, which has contributed to his reclusiveness.

Now 58, Ahmanson is recognized as one of the nation's leading evangelical Christians and one of conservatism's most reliable supporters, though he is hardly a Republican talking-point man. He follows his own script and has parted company with social conservatives before. He thinks those who argue for school prayer, for instance, are confusing the moral with the religious. Morality is how we relate to one another, he says. Religion is how we relate to God "and it's not the government's business."

One can't mention Ahmanson without also discussing his association with Calvinist theologian R.J. Rushdoony, who believed in a literal application of biblical teachings and is credited with inspiring the Christian home-schooling movement.

Rushdoony's ideas captured Ahmanson's imagination in what the philanthropist now calls "my wild youth," but he has mellowed. Ahmanson certainly doesn't believe that homosexuals should be executed, as some of his critics have suggested, but he does believe that gay people should "come to Christ and then recover."

He is also no longer the welfare abolitionist he used to be, "though I hate the attitude that welfare, once granted, is a moral entitlement that can never be reduced. And Social Security and Medicare are included in my definition."

Parker asked Ahmanson, an avid supporter of Proposition 8 -- California's anti-same sex marriage constitutional amendment -- about his attitudes toward gays:

KP: During a 1985 interview with the Orange County Register, you said your political agenda was "total integration of biblical law into our lives." Is that still the case?

HA: That's a bit compromised. We have considerable biblical law in the law now. We've already succeeded in outlawing murder and robbery and perjury. I don't think there's anything wrong or unconstitutional about that.

KP: Well, I think your critics would be talking about things such as biblical treatment of gays.

HA: I certainly don't mean that now. Maybe in my wild youth.

KP: What changed?

HA: I guess just living and aging or something.

KP: Have you mellowed with age?

HA: I suppose so.

KP: Do you have any gay friends?

HA: I don't think so, but I would stand with them on my opinions. And I would be willing to tell them what I think they should do.

KP: Which is?

HA: First come to Christ and then recover.

KP: So you think homosexuality is something from which one can recover?

HA: Yes, I think we can recover from a lot of other things, too. But I think we're all equal as individuals.

For Parker's complete Daily Beast interview with Ahmanson, see http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-03-29/a-prop- 8-crusader-leaves-the-gop/

Judging from the interview, Ahmanson may have crossed the Party divide, but not the ideological one. He also told Parker that while he likes Sarah Palin, he's more of a Bobby Jindal man: "I'm now a blue-dog Democrat for Bobby Jindal for 2012."

Even in this age of the developing ConservaDem, it is difficult to imagine -- other than hoping for his financial support -- that this bluest of all blue dogs will hunt.

Addendum: A pre-conversion Marvin Olasky "Q & A" with Roberta Green Ahmanson, Howard's wife, is available at World magazine -- http://www.worldmag.com/articles/15152.