The American Spectator

p> STONE-THROWING br> Re: Patrick Hynes’s Christian Republicans : /p> p>Patrick Hynes’s statements about the Republican Party and its makeup and history betray a lot of looking at the party through the lens of the Contract With American Republicans of 1994. Much of what he says is factually accurate, yet misses the spirit. Was the party that nominated and elected Herbert Hoover dominated by evangelicals? Was the notorious alcoholic Ulysses S. Grant nominated by a party dominated by teetotaling evangelicals? As recently as the Sixties, the Republicans were anything but the party of Christians. They were known as the party of the country club set. When I was a kid in the Sixties, no evangelical Christian movement for the Republican Party existed. In 1976 people who called themselves Christians voted 2-1 for Jimmy Carter. The modern evangelical influence in the Republican Party began with Reagan and reached its peak in 1994. I for one am worried about the Republicans in 2006 precisely because this “Christian Party” image spells trouble. Evangelicals are relatively new to the Republican Party as a force, anti-slavery times noted, and would do the party as a whole some good to cease portraying every election as a referendum on abortion and the culture wars in general. br> — Robert L. Barninger /p> p> Parson Danforth saw nothing wrong with the 1993 Clinton Administration’s forceful targeting of the Branch Davidians, a small religious minority in Waco, Texas, and the deadly final event of that drama that killed dozens of unarmed women and children. I have no respect for the ex-Senator whatsoever. br> — SPC Snuffy Smith br> Iraq /p>