Conservative revolt.

Right on! ("Let's quit while we're behind" by Christopher Buckley, October). Buckley expresses precisely the same frustrations that I share, ones that drove me to register as an Independent. Unfortunately I voted for George W Bush twice, simply because I found both Gore and Kerry to be arrogant and unlikable. Imagine my horror upon realizing that Bush is even more arrogant.

I grew up with the same influences as Buckley--his father, William F. Buckley Jr., chief among them. I cast my first presidential vote for Barry Goldwater. But George W. Bush and his flock in Congress continue to overwhelm me with their incompetence and their embrace of the ideology of the religious right, which prefers to tell me and the rest of America how to live our personal lives. Thank God Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) is not my personal physician.

Buckley is so accurate in his description of George H.W. Bush, whom I met several times, beginning when he ran for the Senate in Texas. I was the state director for his 1988 campaign. And Buckley's father has had an immense influence on the development of my own political philosophy. I count among my life's treasures the fact that I got to know William F. Buckley when I was president of the Conservative Club at Rutgers-Newark.

Thank you for expressing so well the frustration of this former Republican.

John F. Scott

Buckhannon, W.Va.

As a Democrat who has lived through more than a few of our own embarrassing blunders in governing, I appreciate Buckley's candor. There is nothing wrong with admitting that your party has gone down the wrong path, and that it needs to find its way back to the main highway.

I probably disagree with Mr. Buckley on all the main issues over which the two parties have jousted for the last 60 or so years, but I think we are both agreed that Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, and the rest of the neocons are not a fair sampling of those who consider themselves Republicans. They do not represent the Republican voters I have lived around. The Republican electorate has been tricked by these people, plain and simple. Few, however, are willing to acknowledge that publicly, as Mr. Buckley has. Until they do, there will not be much change.

Norman Gutzmer

Amarillo, Texas 

So Bill Clinton had to come in and clean up the mess created by Reagan and Bush I, and now Mr. Buckley wants Hillary to come in and clean up the mess created by Bush II.

How predictable.

When are conservatives going to realize that conservatism doesn't work because conservatism doesn't work? It isn't anybody else's fault. The Buckleys all write well, but the ability to manipulate the English language doesn't make you insightful. It just makes you manipulative.

The oligarchs and their minions who currently run the Republican Party have always and only been interested in one thing--corporate control of government and the illusion of power that comes with it. In the history of the human race, this approach has never lasted.

Mr. Buckley and his ilk enabled the people about whom they now complain. They brought in Karl Rove. They should be in charge of cleaning up the mess that they created.

Richard Weiner

Adjunct Professor,

Department of Justice Studies

Kent State University

Kent, Ohio