LETTERS: APPEAL TO BUCHANAN: DON'T DEFECT THE GOP

To the editor:

The current flirtation with the Reform Party by Patrick J. Buchanan is most distressing to me. I have had the greatest respect for Pat ever since he was writing editorials for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. It was Pat, along with a few others, who started me really thinking about politics and the future of our nation. The process itself was slow, and the administration of President Jimmy Carter cured me once and for all of being a Democrat. To come all this way with Pat and then to see him, very dangerously, think of leaving the Republican Party is a cause for strong alarm.

I don't know if Pat is mad because so few Republicans believe that he is electable as president or whether he has developed into a megalomaniac who, if he cannot rule, is intent upon ruining the party, or whether he has some deep-seated hatred of George W. Bush and wishes to deny him a great chance at the presidency.

I do know that if Pat insists upon running on a third-party ticket, his legacy will be that of a man who contributed to the election of a Democrat in 2000 and the resulting horror that another Democrat administration would visit upon the nation in the form of at least three more liberal Supreme Court justices and hundreds of lower federal court judges of a similar liberal bent.

To me, it is unthinkable that a man who has always shown himself to be a great American would even consider doing such a thing to our country. The horror that four or possibly eight more years of Democrat corruption and misgovernment would mean for our country fills me with dread. We have Ross Perot to thank for Bill Clinton. I don't want Pat Buchanan's actions to result in the election of Al Gore or Bill Bradley or any other Democrat.

JERRY MITCHELL

Jackson