On days like these, when there’s not a whole lot going on and we’re all waiting to see whether or not John McCain and Freddie Thompson will actually cry when they concede defeat, thoughts turn to Alan Keyes. You see, we need Alan Keyes. And when I say “we,” I mean “writers of snarky blog posts about Republicans.”

So let’s take a look at his public schedule since announcing for President in September.

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OK, so there hasn’t been a lot. But hey, getting on the ballot in seven whole states is hard work, so cut the guy some slack. And look, he traveled to Reno in October and Colorado in November, so that’s an undeniably consistent pace. Hell, maybe he’ll surprise everyone and go out for TWO events in December!

But really the Keyes campaign has been about what Republicans haven’t let him do. Here is a sampling of the news feed on Keyes’ campaign website.

CNN poised to exclude Alan Keyes from last big debate before primaries
Alan Keyes excluded from FRC event
Florida GOP excludes Alan Keyes from Orlando debate
NBC “chooses who is allowed to enter political arena” says Keyes
Alan Keyes excluded from Oct. 9 Michigan Presidential Debate

You have to admit, the campaign has a message. And that message is, “I can’t get out my message!” I guess it’s this selective removal from the debates that has forced Keyes to go directly to the people, once a month, to kickstart the grassroots revolution to renew America.

I can’t wait.

Alan Keyes | 4 Comments »

Mitt Romney is way out in front in Iowa, according to a recent Des Moines Register poll of 405 likely Republican caucus voters.

Mitt Romney 29%
Fred Thompson 18%
Mike Huckabee 12%
Rudy Giuliani 11%
John McCain 7%
Tom Tancredo 5%
Ron Paul 4%
Sam Brownback 2%
Alan Keyes 2%
Duncan Hunter 1%
Not sure/Uncommitted 9%Survey of 405 likely Republican caucus participants was conducted October 1-3. The margin of error is +/- 4.9 percentage points.

For the first time that I have seen, Mike Huckabee surpassed one of the top-tier candidates in polling. Rudy Giuliani  is running fourth behind Romney, Fred Thompson and Huckabee.

Duncan Hunter is polling behind perennial electoral loser, Alan Keyes, who is tied with Kansas Senator Sam Brownback.

(Hat tip: Aron Goldman, race42008.com)

Alan Keyes, Duncan Hunter, Fred Thompson, Iowa, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Polling, Rudy Giuliani, Sam Brownback | 2 Comments »

No, I’m not talking about Alan Keyes. Turns out John McCain might be headed to blood banks to round up some ready cash.

“The campaign has raised only $3.7 million to date for the quarter,” a longtime, influential friend of the Arizona Republican told The Washington Times.

“The hope was to reach $4.5 million, about a third of what was raised in the ‘disastrous’ second quarter,’ ” said the McCain supporter, who has access to the senator’s daily campaign operations.

The figures he cited — although anything but rosy — mask the even worse state of the campaign’s finances, said the source, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect his relationship with the senator.

“Those are gross numbers, not net,” the friend said. “Plus the campaign is carrying $2.5 to $3 million in debt. [He's] done for.”

For context, Ron Paul raised an equivalent amount in the 2nd quarter.

And then there’s Freddie, whose Tragical Memory Tour hit a major roadblock to his effort to woo social conservatives. Seems that Dr. Dobson is as unimpressed as… everyone else.

According to a private e-mail obtained by the AP, influential evangelical leader James Dobson told friends he will not be backing Fred Thompson’s candidacy for president [...]

Said Dobson: “Isn’t Thompson the candidate who is opposed to a Constitutional amendment to protect marriage, believes there should be 50 different definitions of marriage in the U.S., favors McCain-Feingold, won’t talk at all about what he believes, and can’t speak his way out of a paper bag on the campaign trail?” Dobson wrote. “He has no passion, no zeal and no apparent ‘want to.’ And yet he is apparently the Great Hope that burns in the breasts of many conservative Christians? Well, not for me, my brothers. Not for me!”

That’s two down, only eight to go for Keyes. Keyes! He’s got 621 signers to his “Pledge For America’s Revival”! That’s more votes than he got in Illinois in 2004!

Alan Keyes, Fred Thompson, John McCain | 4 Comments »

World Net Daily puts a literary spin on the failure of the “Values Voter Debate”:

With “invisible” candidates who failed to show up getting grilled with questions, hundreds of empty seats, not a single mainstream television network on hand, and the name of God invoked countless times, the “unseen world” clearly dominated last night’s Republican presidential debate in South Florida.

High-profile contenders Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson all chose not to participate, though each had an empty podium with his name displayed on stage to emphasize his absence.

You might have thought all that nothingness would drive the organizers to atheism — certainly it doesn’t say much for their political clout.

The second tier was out in force, at any rate, and Mike Huckabee led the pack, winning the straw poll. Huckabee, it might seem, has nothing to lose by pandering to a religious right that has been feeling neglected lately, though if he were somehow to catapult himself to the nomination, such associations might come back to damage his image as a new and different kind of evangelical politician.

If you missed the debate, or if your streaming video link didn’t work (mine didn’t), you can find the questions here. One is by a gentleman from an organization called “Americans for Truth About Homosexuality.” Sadly, my gay friends and family members inform me that the truth about homosexuality is not nearly as exciting as you might think. But I digress. Video clips will be up at the VVD website, I presume, so you can watch the parade of moral warriors demanding, on behalf of invisible constituencies, just what the invisible candidates plan to do about the imaginary problems confronting their made-up version of America.

Alan Keyes, Duncan Hunter, Florida, Fred Thompson, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Presidential Debates, Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani, Sam Brownback, Tom Tancredo | 4 Comments »

Just when I was getting tired of writing about Republicans, here comes Alan Keyes to bring the fun:

After two previous runs for U.S. president, former Reagan diplomat Alan Keyes has announced he’s again seeking the White House in the 2008 election, and he’ll take part in Monday night’s Republican presidential debate here [That's the "Values Voter Debate" sponsored by WorldNetDaily's own Joseph Farah -- should be chock-full of wingnutty goodness - ed].

Keyes told syndicated radio host Janet Parshall he’s “unmoved” by the lack of moral courage shown by the other candidates, among whom he sees no standout who articulates the “key kernel of truth that must, with courage, be presented to our people.”

He added, “The one thing I’ve always been called to do is to raise the standard … of our allegiance to God and His authority that has been the foundation stone of our nation’s life” – and he decried the lack of “forthright, clear, and clarion declaration” from the current crop of presidential contenders.

Actually, before I go back to talking about Keyes, let’s take another look at the luminaries who’ll be in attendance at WND’s VVD tonight:

Questions will also come from 40 of America’s leaders including: Paul Weyrich, founder and president of the Free Congress Foundation; Phyllis Schlafly, founder and president of Eagle Forum; Don Wildmon, founder and chairman of the American Family Association; Judge Roy Moore, a WND columnist with the Foundation for Moral Law; Rick Scarborough of Vision America; and Mat Staver of Liberty Council.

That sounds like a whole lot of wide stances, if you know what I mean. Can the stalls of Fort Lauderdale contain them?

Anyway, Alan Keyes. Here’s his site RenewAmerica, and if you haven’t visited it, you must. This is the kind of world in which “Fox News [is] blasted for supporting [a] pro-homosexual group.” You can find Keyes’s archive of WND columns here. Let’s take a random sample:

“Surely,” say the demagogues, “an embryo in a Petri dish can’t be compared to a 10-year-old girl. They are materially quite different.” But as the 10-year-old differs materially from the embryo, so the distinguished scientist with an IQ of 176 differs from the 10-year-old. As a matter of fact, the potential of the 10-year-old can’t measure up to the proven achievements of the adult. Our sense of justice isn’t based on their material condition, but on a moral principle that asserts the worth of every human being, regardless of material condition. If we abandon that principle because an embryo is not as materially developed as a 10-year-old , what shall we say when someone points out that we are not as materially developed as the scientist whose knowledge may save thousands, or the general whose skills are needed to defend millions. Will we accept the judgment that our claims of right are irrelevant because our betters have developed the material know-how and means to benefit or destroy us?

Oh… oh yes, this is going to be fun.

Alan Keyes, Presidential Debates | 2 Comments »

Alan Keyes is mulling over another opportunity to embarrass himself with a 2008 presidential bid.

Sources close to Keyes confirmed that he has begun to talk to some of his longtime advisers about a run. But they said he did not direct RenewAmerica, a grassroots activist group he chairs, to send in the fee.

Keyes twice lost races for Senate in Maryland with 38 percent and 29 percent in the late 1980s and early 1990s, failed presidential bids in 1996 and 2000, and he was sacrificed by the Illinois State Republican Party as the carpetbagger candidate to challenge then-State Senator Barack Obama for the open Senate seat. He got 27 percent.

RenewAmerica has started an active Draft Keyes movement through its political action committee. The PAC paid for a table at the Iowa Republican Party straw poll in Ames last month, and Mary Parker Lewis, Keyes’s long-time chief of staff, wrote in an e-mail that she would probably rejoin RenewAmerica soon.

But, she, said, “To date, I would say he has only very provisionally, only in principle, approved their efforts as a moral conservative voter mobilization,” Lewis said.

The political action committee launched to draft Keyes is called “We Need Alan Keyes for President.”

Alan Keyes | 4 Comments »

While the seven Democratic candidates for president made appearances at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials conference on Saturday, the Republican contenders suffered from a mysterious case of scheduling conflictitis: of all the GOP candidates, only Duncan Hunter managed to make it to Orlando for the event. It was left to Florida Senator and RNC Chair Mel Martinez to make the excuses:

“When you’re running a campaign, it is difficult to be everywhere you want to be,” he said. He called it “wrong and unacceptable to draw from that the conclusion that the Republican presidential candidates don’t care about the Hispanic vote or Latinos in this country. … As this campaign unfolds, I think that will become completely clear.”

Asked about the harsh opposition to the immigration bill by several of the GOP candidates, including Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Thompson, he said, “This is a very politically toxic issue, and those that are running for office sometimes run away from tough problems.“

While the Republican candidates were running away from a conversation with Hispanic leaders, the Democrats had plenty of time to comment on the nastiness fueling GOP rhetoric on immigration. Barack Obama mentioned the “ugly overtone” to the immigration debate, while Joe Biden suggested that it has become “has become a race to the bottom – who can be the most anti-Hispanic.”

According to reports, there was plenty of “buzz” at the conference about the remarks by Fred Thompson seemingly comparing Cuban immigrants to terrorists. Hillary Clinton said the comments “appalled” her, adding: “Apparently he doesn’t have a lot of experience in Florida or anywhere else, and doesn’t know a lot of Cuban-Americans.”

Thompson’s comments will be particularly unhelpful to Republicans at a time when Democrats are seeking to expand their Hispanic support, even in Florida, where Cuban exiles have provided a stronghold for the GOP:

In Florida, Republican-leaning, anti-Castro Cubans have long dominated Hispanic politics, and most big-name Hispanic politicians are Republican. But Democrats see hope in the growing proportion of non-Cubans and in the generational erosion of Republican dominance among Cuban immigrants.

While Republicans are “conceding the Latino vote in Florida to Democrats,” the Democratic candidates are “fully recognizing the importance of the Latino community in Florida and nationally,” trumpeted a state Democratic Party press release about the candidates’ forums at the conference.

The no-show on Saturday may only hasten the GOP’s demographic doom. They fed the fires of the immigration debate and now they’re being held hostage to the rages of their own shrinking base, watching as Democrats move in on the voters they have abandoned.

Cross-posted at Alien & Sedition.

Alan Keyes, James Gilmore, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani, Sam Brownback, Tom Tancredo, Tommy Thompson | 10 Comments »