Looks like he might:
Posted on 08/19/2004 12:56:29 AM PDT by kattracks
The movement to legislate reparations for slavery has a new face: Alan Keyes.In a craven attempt to boost his faltering (read: hopeless) Senate campaign, Keyes said Monday that he would support exempting blacks from all taxation in order to repay the debt America owed them for enslaving their ancestors. Blacks would pay only Social Security taxes under his plan. The Chicago Tribune reported that Keyes justified his position with an appeal to ancient history, “When a city had been devastated (in the Roman empire), for a certain length of time – a generation or two – they exempted the damaged city from taxation.” Keyes, usually no fan of the morés of the later Roman Empire, said this would “compensate for all those years when your labor was being exploited.”
When whose labor was being “exploited,” Ambassador? It’s been far more than “a generation or two” since Americans atoned for their tolerance of the peculiar institution, which more than half the country never really tolerated, and which 300,000 free state Americans gave their lives to end.
In contrast, Keyes’ rival Barack Obama sounded much more conservative – not to mention sane – than Keyes, telling Illinois reporters, “I generally think that the best strategies for moving forward involve vigorously enforcing our anti-discrimination laws in education and job training and other programs that can lift all people out of poverty.”
Thus, in the Illinois Senate race, the left-wing Democrat has shunned the overheated racialist rhetoric embraced by his ultra-conservative Republican challenger.
So manifest is the illogic behind the reparations movement that it has been recognized by none other than Alan Keyes. Discussing the Civil War in a column in 2002, Keyes wrote, “The price for the sin of slavery has already been paid, in blood.” This would make Keyes’ second major flip-flop since announcing his candidacy last week, the first being his carpetbagger candidacy itself.
Mark your calendars: this is the earliest point at which Keyes has resorted to racial demagoguery, a staple of Keyes’ media appearances for nearly 20 years. When Keyes left the State Department in the late 1980s, he blamed his stalled career on a biased superior. Keyes referred to his inability to attract media attention during the 1996 presidential primaries as “a blackout, which means you keep the black out.” (Keyes last cited his racially charged dictionary in 1992, when he told Republicans they had gone colorblind, which “means that when a colored person walks in, you suddenly go blind.”) In 2000, the single-digit candidate accused the New Hampshire press corps of racism for not covering his presidential campaign to his satisfaction.
Beyond stirring ethnic animosities, Keyes also has a habit of engaging in genuinely neurotic behavior. Keyes chained himself to an Atlanta TV station in 1996, then went on a hunger strike to protest his exclusion from a televised debate. He deliberately provided fodder for Michael Moore’s camera during the 2000 primaries, body surfing the crowd at an alternative rock concert in return for Moore’s promised endorsement. (Moore predictably reneged.) Will this man convince Illinois voters that he’s the steady hand they want at the nation’s helm during a time of war?
The Illinois Republican Party chose Keyes, because, like his opponent, he is a minority and an eloquent speaker. If there’s any truth to the charge that the Republican Party is racist, it lies in the fact that the GOP continues to lavish political attention on a proven loser, with a case of racial hypersensitivity and a penchant for spouting nutty-sounding rhetoric, merely because he is black.
The reason Alan Keyes accepted the nomination is clear: running for elective office is his most reliable means of employment. Keyes paid himself $100,000 out of his campaign funds when he ran for Paul Sarbanes’ U.S. Senate seat in 1992 and more money out of subsequent campaigns. After telling Wolf Blitzer he was not taking a salary during his 1996 presidential bid, he was caught taking $20,000 (which he reimbursed after unwanted publicity).
For those who share a conservative position on social issues, Alan Keyes is not the face you want associated with your cause. Although he enacted little of his social agenda, Ronald Reagan gave religious conservatives a major propaganda coup by associating their opinions (which the media always portrayed as “extreme”) with his warm personality.
Alan Keyes does no such thing. He began the race by referring to the pro-choice African-American Obama as a “slaveholder” with all the sophistication and finesse of a street preacher. As Mike Murphy has noted in the Weekly Standard: “The job of a political candidate is to attract people to a party's political philosophy and bring victory to the party on Election Day. In two U.S. Senate races and two presidential campaigns, Alan Keyes has done the exact opposite: shown a great ability to stampede voters away from his candidacy like a herd of panicking animals fleeing a huge volcanic eruption.” Indeed, in his two home state Senate races (1988 and 1992), Keyes garnered 38 and 29 percent of the vote, respectively. In a ludicrous race against an equally charismatic, far more mainsteam-sounding minority politician, he is likely to pull in even fewer votes.
He’s already off to a disastrous start. In the now-reliably Democratic state of Illinois, Keyes chose to make his campaign’s keynote issue abortion, trumpeting his opposition to abortion in the case of rape and incest – a position far more restrictive than the Republican Party platform.
Electorally speaking, if Alan Keyes becomes equated with the pro-life movement, the public will safely conclude the pro-life movement is politically untenable. And the damage he does in the next seven weeks will go a long way towards eroding support for the Party of Lincoln in the Land of Lincoln.
Keyes is an eloquent spokesman for causes near to his heart. For the sake of those issues – and the Republican Party – he should never seek to be anything more.
Keyes2000mt: Keyes in the year before he ran for the Senate earned $300,000 a year, so he was taking a 2/3 pay cut to run for the Senate in Maryland in '92.
I think most of us would consider a person making $300,000 per year relatively wealthy, and $96,000 a fairly generous salary, especially since one would assume the campaign paid his expenses in addition to the salary.
Yet, in the end, the people of America, set it right.
The time approaches when it will be done again.
Contingent of course upon the handing in and destruction of your passport and US citizenship at the port of embarkation immediately before boarding the aircraft.
$96,000 would be great. However, one has to remember that he bought a house, car depending on a 300,000 a year salary.
i.e., he doesn't live like the rest of us.....
So now we're saying that Upper Middle Class people have to sacrifice their whole livelihood to serve their country?
Well, don't complain that good people don't run, because good people can't afford to ruin their families.
So if Alan Keyes is accustomed to drawing a salary of $300K, and he also qualifies for reparations under this plan, how can you honestly make this claim?
You really can't.
So now we're saying that Upper Middle Class people have to sacrifice their whole livelihood to serve their country?
The problem isn't the sacrifice of serving, it's the sacrifice of running. America is ruled by the golden rule of politics, "He who has the gold rules." It used to be in the founding era, people running for President or Senate didn't campaign. The Presidential candidate stayed home, lived his life, and waited for the results.
I have no problem with people sacrificing when they serve, I have a problem with expecting peole to be destitute so they can run.
Well maybe Keyes can take some of the tax break money and use it to pay candidates while they are on the circuit trying to get that elected job so they can serve.... Heck we've got us a new 'class' of ppl now... Yep, I think Keyes could or should undertake that as part of his tax break plan.... Maybe only for a couple of generations also.
Now in all seriousness, it is a problem. If you aren't at least partially weathly or have some income from a business, investments, inheritance, etc then you do have a problem taking off your job to run while at the same time maintaining support for the family.
And of course, the prcentage of the slave-descended population which makes upper class income would be what? under 2% I guess since Bill Clinton was claiming that only about 2% of ALL taxpayers made that much.
Besides, don't nitpick the paln with me - I haven't said I liked it or endorsed it - only that any smart guy is entitled to a loopy, impossible-to-pass, idea once in a while.
I'm not nitpicking. I'm responding to your claim.
I still don't think it can be legitimately said that it's to remedy economic impact if included in its beneficiaries are people who make upwards of $300K a year - not to mention the Oprah Winfreys of the world.
People keep saying that poor black people don't pay anything anyway - does this plan really sound like remedy for economic impact if that is the case?
I don't think so.
I do agree that it's loopy.
No, I'm saying that "ordinary people" don't generally make anywhere close to $300,000 per year.
That being said, if one is running on principle and conscience as Keyes has always said he is, I'd think that making some sacrifices might be acceptable.
I also think that most of us here, if making that much money and sufficiently motivated, could find a way within a year or two to get all our bills (including the house and car) paid off and save up a couple of hundred thousand to pay for our run....but maybe not.
When we have people like Keyes, Oprah Winfrey, Clarence Thomas, Condeleeza Rice, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Bill Cosby, Morgan Freeman, (the list goes on but you get the idea) I wonder why people see a need for this.
Seems to me there must be a reason other than who one's ancestors were that determines success or lack thereof.
And, I agree with you that Keyes' plan would be targeted toward those blacks who are already successful, not the ones who actually might need economic assistance.
Well again Keyes sacrificed $200,000 a year in income. Of course, with speaking arrangements he has now this is hardly necessary.
Looks like he might:
Nice house! Did it say how much property comes with that?
What a martyr for the cause!
He's being paid to speak?
It was back in 2000 when Moore was doing his tv show "The Awful Truth" and offered to put up an endorsement on his website of any politician who would crowd surf a mosh pit that he drove up to their appearances on a flatbed truck. Keyes was the only candidate to take the plunge, and Moore duly included an endorsement and link to Keyes on his website.
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