The letters to the editor in the latest American Conservative (12/04 issue) include some remarkable statements.  One Ted Barrett responded most negatively to TAC‘s election editorial, GOP Must Go, saying, among other things:

To vote for liberals to spite conservatives is absolute suicide–something I don’t believe in either. 

At least there’s no compromising on absolute suicide.  Relative suicide would be something else again.  This statement makes a certain amount of sense, except that the “spiting” going on in the editorial in question was of Mr. Bush and his agenda, which, as longtime readers of the magazine would already know, was anything but conservative.  It has been a typical refrain that opposing the GOP this year would undermine conservatives, to which the only appropriate response seems to me to be, “You mean there are still conservatives in the GOP?”  I jest, but only slightly.

Robert Mautz of Zanesville wrote as perfect a demonstration of circular reasoning as you will find anywhere:

As far as the argument that Bush’s policies have emboldened terrorists, this is a ridiculous. [sic]  If Bush’s policies embolden terrorists, then the terrorists should want these policies to continue so that the [sic] can recruit more terrorists; however, terrorists want the Democrats to regain power.

Isn’t it obvious?  How can you argue with a thing like that? 

Then there was Jason Reeves, who lamented TAC‘s neglect of the mighty electoral machine that is the Constitution Party.  On this I have a little more to say.  I am registered with the New Mexico affiliate of the CP, though you would be hard-pressed to find any evidence that such an affiliate does or ever did exist.  In the veritable one-party state that is New Mexico, where Democrats dominate all aspects of state government, rightist protest votes tend to be pretty small and there tends to be no large constituency in our subsidy-dependent state for paring the government back to the bone.  Therefore, the CP in New Mexico is extremely small and typically runs no candidates.  Now I generally agree with the CP platform, and I voted for Michael Peroutka in 2004.  But how exactly is the CP relevant to midterm elections?  Like all other failed third parties to date, they organise for the presidential elections in the hopes of making some small ripples on the national scene, instead of building up positions at the local and state level and then establishing a presence in Congress.  Once the presidential race is over, the party largely goes into hibernation until the next one comes around, when they begin the entire dance again.  To have endorsed the Constitution Party, which was running perhaps a handful of candidates for Congress (if that), rather than taking account of the need to hold Republicans to account for their misrule, would have shown the TAC editors to be fairly frivolous.  One might disagree more heartily with the decision to have multiple endorsements in 2004, but there the CP candidate received two endorsements out of six, which is two more than he received from just about anywhere else.  I appreciate Mr. Reeves’ maximalist, all or nothing approach to politics, and I still share more of it than most, but it is singularly unrealistic to expect anyone else to pay attention to the demands of maximalists who insist that everyone who has not, as of right now, embraced the glory of the Constitution Party must have already sold out to the system.