Alan Keyes: Not Again

So Alan Keyes has announced he’s leaving the Republican Party. Over the last few months, I’ve received numerous emails and comments from those hoping that Keyes would enter the presidential race in some capacity: either as a candidate for the top spot, or that one of those running would select him for veep.

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Many of those people believe he has the conservative credentials to codify a fractured Republican voting block. I beg to differ. This morning, I received the following press release from a publicist…

ALAN KEYES LEAVES REPUBLICAN PARTY

Will the Republican Party Go the Way of the Whigs? Is history about to repeat itself? Abraham Lincoln left the popular party of his day, The Whigs, to run for President on the long shot fringe new political party calling themselves Republicans. The long shot won and Honest Abe became the first Republican President. On April 15, 2008 at 9 pm ET in the Lincoln Room in Hazelton, PA, Dr. Alan Keyes made history: he formally left the Republican Party and is looking seriously at a Presidential run on the “long shot” Constitution Party ticket. The Constitution Party convention begins in just over one week.

Whenever I hear Alan Keyes’ name, I also hear two words: Barack Obama. Keyes carpetbagged into Illinois to run for the seat vacated by United States Senator Peter Fitzgerald. As an orator, talk show host, and conservative activist, he should have handed Obama his lunch, without the arugula. On the first day of his campaign, he set up Obama in a way that could have forever stripped him of the race-bully-pulpit he enjoys today.

August 9, 2004…

“The conservative former diplomat said Obama’s vote against a bill that would have outlawed a form of late-term abortion denied unborn children of their equal rights. Both candidates — one an outspoken conservative and the other a favorite of party liberals — are black. “I would still be picking cotton if the country’s moral principles had not been shaped by the Declaration of Independence,” Keyes said. He said Obama “has broken and rejected those principles — he has taken the slaveholder’s position.”

Barack Obama gave a response that can only be described as a slow, fat pitch across the plate.

Asked specifically about the phrase “slaveholder’s position,” Obama said Keyes “should look to members of his own party to see if that’s appropriate if he’s going to use that kind of language.”

Alan Keyes could have publicly taken Obama (and the rest of liberal-educated America) to school when it comes to which party WAS the party of slavery in America. Keyes could have neutered Obama and possibly the entire Democrat Party’s lock on the black vote by retelling the black experience in America in ways only Alan Keyes could. Keyes could have reminded Obama that the Democrat Party’s support of abortion is responsible for what some have called the “black genocide.” I became a Keyes supporter when I watched him on television during his first presidential run in 1996. I was interviewed at length by his campaign for the opportunity to co-produce his radio and television campaign ads, but alas, his campaign never got that far. In 2004, I recorded the speech he delivered in Boston the weekend before gay marriage became law in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. However, Alan Keyes became part of the “politics as usual” crowd when he abandoned one of his most strident positions and, purely for sucking up to the black vote, advocated “reparations”. Aside from the further widening of the racial divide a discussion of reparations would initiate, if we can’t pay for Social Security when I become of age, how could we afford to award millions of dollars in targeted tax breaks to the millions of blacks in America? Was he that hard up for votes? Alan Keyes wrote “Paid In Blood”, one of the most dynamic arguments ever issued against reparations. For him to change his mind, purely for votes, was the mother of all disappointments. As liberals frequently use the term “sellout” when referring to black conservatives, I won’t go there. But I’m damn close. His flop on reparations probably contributed to his only receiving 27 percent of the vote, the worst finish for any candidate for the U.S. Senate election in Illinois in history. I’m sure Barack has thanked Alan Keyes every day since. So when reading that release from the publicist, I find it ironic that the first sentence wasn’t better chosen…

Is history about to repeat itself?

Alan Keyes’ sorry excuse for a campaign gave us a Barack Obama, a condescending ultra-liberal perilously close to becoming the next Commander-in-Chief. His egomaniacal quest for attention could potentially produce a President Obama, should Keyes successfully pull a Perot and split the conservative vote. He lost to Barack Obama once. Now he wants us to help him do it again. Alan Keyes would make a great Press Secretary. I’d love to see him talk down Helen Thomas and David Schuster. But he’s done enough damage to the Republican Party as it is. Dirty Harry once said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Winning is Alan Keyes’ limitation. Handing the presidency to Barack Obama would be one helluva legacy. Something Alan Keyes should think about, long and hard.