Alan Keyes: Not Again

by Bob Parks, Outside the Wire: 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.

Many of those people believe he has the conservative credentials to codify a fractured Republican voting block. I beg to differ. . . . 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. . . .

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”. . .

Alan Keyes’ sorry excuse for a campaign gave us a Barack Obama, 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 . . . [Read More]

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