Keyes run puts GOP to the test (JESSE JAGMO OFFERS HIS ADVICE)

Alan Keyes' sudden entry into the Illinois Senate race provides a good test. Not of state Sen. Barack Obama, the dynamic Democratic front-runner, but of George W. Bush.

A couple weeks ago, the president spoke before the Urban League, a rare venture for the president who has refused to meet with the NAACP, NOW or the AFL-CIO. Bush gained wall-to-wall press coverage by suggesting that blacks are not served well by liberal policies and are taken for granted by Democrats. The president argued that African Americans would ''gain leverage'' by splitting our votes and political participation between the parties.

The statement, of course, ignored much reality and history. Bush's Republican Party gained its majority in Congress by making itself the party of white sanctuary in the South. The race-bait politics of Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond and Lee Atwater successfully ran African Americans and Latinos out of the party, and lured the white majority in. A party led by Bush, Bill Frist of Tennessee and Tom DeLay of Texas isn't exactly a party that seems receptive to African Americans or Latinos.

And a president who got into Yale as a legacy admission but labors to outlaw affirmative action for minorities and women doesn't exactly endear his party to African Americans. But at last week's UNITY journalists convention, Bush said he now was against legacy admissions because it was contrary to ''merit.'' This flip-flop naturally sent university administrators and political strategists scurrying.

So Alan Keyes' carpetbag candidacy represents a good test of whether Bush and his party are prepared to walk the walk, or are simply, as they say in Texas, all hat and no cattle.

Democrats have embraced Barack Obama as a star. He is well-educated, an excellent speaker and leader. He started as an underdog, but now he's likely to become the only African American in the U.S. Senate. He's received contributions from Democrats across the country. He delivered the keynote address at the Democratic convention in Boston, providing a national audience for his candidacy.

Keyes is also articulate and smart. His views are extreme, admittedly, but no more extreme than those of Rep. Tom DeLay or Vice President Dick Cheney.

So Keyes is a fair test. Will Republicans pay off his debts, pay the rent on his new apartment in Illinois, hire him a serious campaign team and finance his campaign at the level needed to be competitive? Or are they simply tossing him as a token into a losing cause? Will Bush invite him to deliver the keynote or at least a prime-time address at the Republican convention? We can measure how much ''leverage'' playing on the right side of the field in a Republican jersey provides African Americans by how the party and the president treat Keyes.

Now admittedly, Keyes isn't exactly yacht club material, and he's a bit of an oddity as a candidate. He's running to represent the people of Illinois -- people he has never served in a state where he has never lived. He considered carpetbagging an affront to ''federalism'' until the Republicans came to call.

But his flip-flop on that is no greater than Bush's on the importance of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. His views tend to the extreme, to be sure, but only because he says aloud what Cheney thinks to himself. And he's down the line with Bush on the issues. Cutting taxes on millionaires while laying off teachers fits Keyes' priorities just fine. So the president has every reason to support Keyes, who will carry his views into battle -- as soon as he gets a map of Illinois and figures his way around.

So Mr. Bush, was the Urban League speech all hot air, meant to generate news for a day? Or are you and your party ready to ante up?

Provide the dough, provide the platform at the convention. Demonstrate that African Americans like Keyes, who serve at the beck and call of your party and are prepared to move from Gaithersburg, Md., on a day's notice, are treated with the respect they deserve. Keyes may well be a better test of Bush's word than he will of Barack Obama's candidacy. We'll all look for him at the Republican convention in New York.

Democrats have embraced Barack Obama as a star. He is well-educated, an excellent speaker and leader.

Well, yes he is, and more than that... he's a "black leader" who isn't a public embarrassment. After Jocylin Elders, Jessie Jackson, Sheila Jackson Lee, Cynthia McKinney, Rev'runt Al, Marion Berry (oh, just pick about any black Democrat), Barack Obama comes across as intelligent and articulate, actually able to speak proper English, and able to talk to white people without scaring the crap out of them.

Let's face it, they don't have many of those. Harold Ford, maybe. So Barack Obama is a catch for the Dems.

Fact is, most of the truly impressive black leaders I can think of are conservatives. Like Alan Keyes.

>>> "Keyes is also articulate and smart. His views are extreme, admittedly, but no more extreme than those of Rep. Tom DeLay or Vice President Dick Cheney."
Actually, a pretty good selling point for all three guys. <<

Yeah, the bizarre thing is that Je$$e's anti-Keyes piece in today's Sun-Times is actually more complimentary to Keyes than any of the bile we've been getting from the white liberal columnists. Je$$e doesn't like Keyes' position on the issues, but he gives the devil his due and simply calls on Republican leaders to fully fund and commit to his campaign if they are serious about reaching out to blacks (I agree, see Unspun's petition)

The only sticking point is his continued whine about carpetbagging. Gee, I guess he's had a change of heart about this after all these years of doing it himself. I have to wonder when Je$$e is going to pack up Rainbow-PUSH and move the gang back to his homestate of South Carolina, since all know why Je$$e decided to leave HIS home state and shack here -- and it sure wasn't the nice weather in Chicago.

Jesse Louis Jackson was born on October 8, 1941. He was born in Greenville, South Carolina. Jesse was born to the parents of Helen Burns and Noah Robinson. Helen remarried two years later to a man named Charles Jackson. Noah Robinson was Jesse's real father. People said that Noah was the best known black man in Greenville when Jesse was born. Noah lived in a good neighborhood and worked at Ryan textile mill. Noah had another son, Noah Robinson Junior. By the age of 7, Noah, Jr. found out about Jesse being his half brother.

Jesse Jackson attended North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro. That college was an all African American college. As a college senior he became a civil rights leader.

In the mid-1960s, Jackson began working for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference(SCLC). This was a civil rights organization funded by Martin Luther King Jr. In 1964, he went to Selma, Alabama, where Martin Luther King, Jr. was leading the fight for Blacks to vote.

Even though King was such a great leader and the reason Jesse came to Alabama, Jesse and King did not get a long. Jesse would always speak up and really wanted to get his way. They had their ups and their downs. One time, King got very angry and told Jesse to leave.

In April 1968 Jackson was with King and some of his followers at a Memphis, Tennessee, motel when King was assassinated. After King's death, tensions developed between Jackson and his SCLC colleagues. A dispute about the events surrounding King's death also increased conflict within the SCLC leadership. Immediately after King's assassination, Jackson claimed to have been the last person to talk to King before he died and to have cradled his head after he was shot. Other SCLC leaders vehemently denied this and accused Jackson of lying in order to help his own career. Jackson's prominence, along with his aggressive leadership and failure to consult with other leaders, led to further friction within SCLC.

In 1971 Jackson left SCLC and began building his own Chicago-based organization known as PUSH—People United to Save (later Serve) Humanity. He founded the organization in an ambitious attempt to adopt affirmative action programs, to hire more black executives and supervisors, and to buy from black suppliers, wholesalers, and distributors. Jackson also launched a companion project, PUSH-EXCEL…

You mean Je$$e Jack$on was a "carpetbagger" who came to Illinois SOLELY to further his own career and engage in political activism? Say it ain't so!

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