MY ESSAY berating the Illinois Republican party for enlisting Alan Keyes as their Senate candidate has generated a hefty pile of emails from Keyes’s many cyber-fans. Since the letters all ask the same questions or make the same points, I thought a brief response was due. The missives fall into two categories. The first goes something like, “Hey Wise guy, we get the fact that you can’t stand AMBASSADOR Keyes, but you didn’t give us one single legitimate reason why it is a bad idea for him to be the Republican candidate in Illinois.”

Dear Respect the One Former Office Alan Keyes Held,

I thought the Keyes weakness is painfully obvious, but here goes: The job of a political candidate is to attract people to a party’s political philosophy and bring victory to the party on Election Day. In two U.S. Senate races and two presidential campaigns, Alan Keyes has done the exact opposite: shown a great ability to stampede voters away from his candidacy like a herd of panicking animals fleeing a huge volcanic eruption. Even Keyes’ cable TV chat show, with its unforgettably Orwellian title, Alan Keyes Is Making Sense was abruptly cancelled for low ratings. When voters listen to a successful candidate they get a strong feeling that this person can do the job and make life better. When voters listen to Alan Keyes, they get the perception, “wow, this guy is stone cold nuts” and they run home to hide their children. We Republicans are the free market party, so look to Keyes’s prior history in elections and trust the market.