Alabama Governor Bob Riley wants to raise taxes on families and businesses in his state by $1.2 billion. And he's telling residents that it's their Christian duty to support him.

The tax hike would be nearly double the size of the $675 million budget deficit and eight times more than the largest tax hike in state history. And while this may sound like the behavior of a tax-and-spend Democrat, Governor Riley is actually a Republican. He was elected last year on conservative credentials earned during his three terms in Congress, where his voting record could have been mistaken for Newt Gingrich's. These days, Mr. Riley is more likely to be mistaken for a certain California politician currently facing a recall election.

Gone is the campaign rhetoric about "returning credibility to state government" that Candidate Riley used to defeat his Democratic predecessor. As recently as March, he declared in his State of the State address, "I will not entertain the idea of additional taxes until we reform the policies and practices that have created the problems we face today."

But only a month later, at the Governor's urging, Alabama's Democrat-controlled state legislature approved a tax package built largely on record hikes in income and property rates. The saving grace: The state constitution requires that the measure also be approved by voters. A referendum is set for September 9.

Stumping on behalf of his tax hike, Mr. Riley, a Southern Baptist, has tried to appeal to the spiritual side of voters in his Bible Belt state. "According to our Christian ethics," he's fond of saying, "we're supposed to love God, love each other and help take care of the poor."

Ironically, it's Alabama's underclass that is showing the most resistance to the plan. A poll released last month showed 49% against the referendum and 39% in favor. But voters with household incomes below $30,000 opposed the tax hike by 2-to-1. Mr. Riley says he's trying to help the state's poorest residents by raising the income tax threshold to $17,000 from $4,600.

What he's not saying, but what tax-wary Alabamians seem to understand, is that these targeted income tax cuts would be more than offset by the tax increases on everything else. The Governor's proposal raises levies on, among other things, sales, services, mortgages, deeds, cigarettes, property, insurance and small businesses. And the poor would be hit hardest.

Mr. Riley says he wants to make Alabama's tax structure -- where the top 50% of wage earners already pays 96% of the taxes -- more "progressive." Gray Davis could give him a nice tutorial on where that leads.

As with most other state legislatures, Montgomery's lawmakers have been unable to control expenditures. According to the watchdog group Americans for Tax Reform, since 1994 state spending has increased 6.5% annually while the economy has grown by only 4.9%. The fact that the Governor wants $1.2 billion to close a budget gap half that size is a good indication that he has no plans to change this trend.

Having been all but abandoned by the state Republican Party -- two cabinet members have quit in protest -- Governor Riley has stooped to using civil rights rhetoric to make bald racial appeals to black residents who normally vote Democrat. The good news is that they don't seem to be paying him much attention, even when he claims that without his tax hikes teachers and police officers will be fired and the elderly will be sleeping on the streets. We're all for Republican outreach, but not if it means aping the worst kind of liberal demagoguery.

Perhaps the voters simply don't believe him. After all, the doomsday scenarios are coming from the same man who only five months ago said he wouldn't raise taxes. We're not sure where the Bible comes down on tax-and-spend politicians, but we have a pretty good idea of what it says about people who break their word.