Your tactics are straight out of Saul Alinsky’s playbook.
Why do you feel so threatened by Alan Keyes?
It wouldn't surprise me if Obama is a communist. He sure seems like it. However, Keyes's kookiness makes him a less than credible witness...
A SUMMARY MOMENT occurred during the primary in New Hampshire, with interesting omens for the Republican future...
The summary event I mentioned took place during a debate in the New Hampshire contest, moderated by Tim Russert. It was a moment when the redoubtable Keyes—a preacher without a church—stepped forward to call Sen. McCain to judgment. McCain's mortal sin was to reveal that he had been to a rock concert with his fifteen-year-old daughter and had liked a band called Nine Inch Nails.
Unfortunately, Nine Inch Nails is a heavy-metal group whose cacophonies are spiked with four-letter words. McCain's inept bid to join the popular culture was reminiscent of other failed Republican efforts, as when Ronald Reagan's staff tried to appropriate a song by Bruce Springsteen as its campaign theme back in the '80s, whereupon Springsteen threatened to sue. The Reagan team had neglected to note that the rock star was so far over the left cliff he thought the Communists were the heroes in Vietnam and Republicans the aggressors.
In New Hampshire, McCain's misstep allowed Keyes to turn his lamp of righteousness on his hapless opponent.
Keyes (sternly): Don't you think that as leaders we ought to be a little bit more serious about the kind of influences that are now destroying the lives of our children, instead of aiding and abetting the cultural murder that is taking place?
McCain (to Russert): Can I get a life-line? (laughter)
Russert: Who do you want to call?
McCain: My 15-year-old daughter. (laughter)
Keyes (glowering): I'm a father and I've got to tell you—I'm not laughing.
It was as if Keyes had caught the Senator making whoopie with the Antichrist.
ILLINOIS REPUBLICANS, at one time a canny and crafty lot, have made a stupid error in hiring Alan Keyes to slap together what's left of the party's U.S. Senate nomination and go howling off into battle against Democrat Barack Obama. The Democrat's wunder-candidate will give this race national attention and the local GOPer's thick-headed Grand Strategy--"hmmm, they've got a black candidate who can give one hell of a speech . . . we need a black candidate who can give a fiery speech"--is likely to set the already tattered Illinois Republican party back at least another five years...
Obviously, I'm not a big Alan Keyes fan. My last significant encounter with the former ambassador occurred at the door of a local television station in Atlanta Georgia in the spring of 1996. The station was holding a TV debate for the presidential primary and had banned Keyes, who was then running for president. My candidate, former governor Lamar Alexander, and I had the bad timing to enter the station at exactly the moment Keyes was attempting a media stunt that included chaining himself to the front door. A minor scuffle occurred and I remember the priceless look on the normally unflappable Gov. Alexander's face when he realized that he was a split second away from becoming hopelessly chained to a frothing Alan Keyes in front a phalanx of glaring TV lights and news cameras. Zigzagging in a flash like an NFL running back, Alexander shot through the door like a rocket, evading Keyes and pulling me through in his draft alone. It was the highlight of the Alexander for President campaign in Georgia.
I'm certain Ambassador Keyes is now busily at work printing up some "Crazy Times Demand a Crazy Senator" yard signs and oiling his trusty chains for a repeat performance in Chicago this fall...