Surely you jest. Perhaps you should redefine the definition of "conservative".
I would normally go for the more Bush candidate..the center-right candidate, not the rock-ribbed conservative like Keyes is.
But, at this point, give him a shot. He is a very smart guy, and though I don't agree with him always, he would be a great person to have on our side in the Senate.
At this late hour, he is the person with the ability to really crank up the attention on the campaign and bring national recognition. The other folks would not be able to do that as well even though they might have higher initial name recognition in Illinois.
Many people, especially on the left, find Alan Keyes funny. One Maureen Dowd column suggested that Keyes sounds like Marvin the Martian. Others have been less kind. "Hectoring megalomaniac," "shrill fanatic," "paranoid egoist," "Harold Stassen on steroids"—these are labels that stick easily to the frenetic moralist.
And no wonder. At various stops along the primary trail, Keyes has referred to the U.S. government and George Bush as "massa," compared abortion and taxes to slavery, and accused the media of "racism" for not taking his candidacy as seriously as Keyes himself does. In these puerile outbursts, Keyes actually achieved something remarkable—a racial mugging delivered by a religious conservative reminiscent of the Sharpton left.
I do not find Alan Keyes particularly funny. I find him angry, hysterical and mean-spirited—which is pretty much a voter's-eye view. All that keeps Keyes from attaining Sharptonesque proportions as a public menace is his political irrelevance. Unlike Sharpton, Keyes has no following of resentful radicals and hate-whitey blacks that is large enough to affect the direction of his party or, given the right circumstances, provoke mayhem in the streets.
Keyes' audience does contain a cohort of moral zealots, but his main constituency consists of pale-faced conservatives so desperate for a black face to defend them against radical attacks that they don't seem to appreciate the way in which their candidate himself is a radical.