As A Senate Candidate…Keyes Will Force Debate On The Real Issues

CHICAGO — In football terms: With his back to the goalposts, limping with injuries and the clock running out, the Illinois GOP’s quarterback faded back hurriedly and threw a long, spiraling pass far over the heads of the players to a lone receiver whose arms were extended in a seemingly hopeless attempt to receive it. It was, in fact, truly a "Hail Mary" pass brilliantly completed. Who was the quarterback? An amalgam of several all-but-faceless Republican committeemen. Yes, I know, like you I wince whenever sports commentators refer to last desperation tosses as "Hail Mary." Or when Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf referred to it in a military briefing. Used for sports or battle, it seems irreverent.

But for a party to recruit the nation’s most articulate defender of the Judeo-Christian ethic, one of the outstanding lay Catholics in the nation today, the term fits. And the Hail Mary pass completed here two weeks ago was a final appeal to a superbly equipped intellectual athlete to rescue a party that once stood for human rights. And draft pick Alan Keyes (a frequent speaker at Wanderer Forums) jumped up in faraway Maryland to catch the ball, becoming the first candidate in modern U.S. history to be truly begged by his party to run for the Senate.

Other recent out-of-state candidates, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Robert Kennedy, had arranged for inside pals to "urge" them to run. Keyes had literally no one on the 19-member Republican State Central committee who knew him personally. One did — only by reputation. But that reputation, for courage and brilliant cognitive acumen, was enough.

In an earlier piece I reported somewhat on the agony of the state GOP. Henry Hyde and a few others notwithstanding, Lincoln’s party here has fallen upon evil days. For decades its fortunes were in the hands of pro-abort relativists, Governors Jim Thompson and Jim Edgar, whose bywords were to meld indistinguishably with the ascendant liberal Democratic philosophy.

A supreme irony: The only president to be born in Illinois, Ronald Reagan, was never deemed worthy of emulation by the two Jims. Their social policy involved pro-abortion, pro-gay rights, and anything liberals seized upon.

Then came what was supposed to be a great conservative faux hope — the secretary of state, George Ryan. With a great jowly face and Irish mug, Ryan didn’t go out of his way to inform people he was an Orangeman (a Methodist). He was a pol’s pol, with many a wink and nod-cutting deals with the Dems — but still, his friends averred, a pro-lifer and social conservative. In reality he didn’t sell out, he rented out years earlier.

Despite tons of money for TV in 1998 he found it an incredibly rough gubernatorial race, going against a pro-life Democratic congressman named Glenn Poshard, a downstater so honest he wouldn’t accept PAC checks. George Ryan not only accepted all kinds of money, he sucked it up as one gluttonous vacuum cleaner. Once in office, he betrayed his trust to the pro-lifers, but venality did him in and he was indicted in a spectacular bribe scandal stemming from his secretary of state days. The feds allege he then presided over a stewing pot of corruption involving illiterate foreign truckers receiving their commercial licenses in exchange for bribes.

In all, the Ryan scandal was the worst one involving a governor in a state where many pols have detoured from the political straight and narrow since its admission to the Union in 1818. Moreover, Ryan had, in his single term, so misspent an inherited surplus that its operations were running on empty. Small wonder the GOP was repudiated at the polls in 2002, all its state officials replaced by Dems save one: the state treasurer, a female pro-abort who played her accordion at gay pride celebrations.

I want to tell you, in no other state have pro-life conservatives more reason to be downhearted. And even more so when the state treasurer accordion lady was made state GOP chairman.

For a state GOP flat on its back, it did come back in the spring primary of 2004 with a number of good candidates for the U.S. Senate. And the man who won the nomination, a multimillionaire and part-time teacher at an inner-city high school, seemed too good to be true. He was slated to run against one who might become only the third African American senator in modern times, State Sen. Barack Obama, whom the gushing liberal press passionately embraced as the living embodiment of Martin Luther King and Sidney Poitier.

Alas, Jack Ryan (no relation to the indicted ex-governor) was indeed too good to be true. As the world knows, he took his now ex-wife to sex clubs, the subject of her complaint in divorce records regarded as sealed. When the nosy Chicago Tribune sued to get the file unsealed, everybody ran for the exits — everybody, that is, except Jack Ryan who for weeks dithered and did not resign his candidacy.

During that time the GOP was a living Little Shop of Horrors. Good potential candidates were entreated, only to turn the nomination down. Then the party seemed to hallucinate about celebrities. Ex-Bears coach Mike Ditka was suggested. He pondered for three days, then declined. The names kept coming fast and furiously: even ex-tennis star Jimmy Connors.

Under law, the State Central Committee has the job of naming a replacement. And so this 19-member body convened in executive session. For two full days the committee met at this city’s Union League Club, under the erratic presiding gavel of the pro-abort state treasurer accordionist. The liberal metropolitan press gathered outside could hear shouts of anger bursting through the seams of the heavy walnut door.

The first day they adjourned not sine die but almost dead. Then on the second day there seemingly appeared a puff of smoke signifying a decision was being formulated — but the smoke was not conclusive. A spokesman said the GOP was considering two candidates: both of them black. The media looked incredulous. For a party that probably could only list about 12 African Americans with the courage to call themselves Republicans to have two black contenders for the U.S. Senate was a stunning anomaly.

One was one Andrea Grubb Barthwell, until recently deputy director of the Drug Enforcement Administration, named by President Bush. The second was Alan Keyes. But it looked like Barthwell would get it. She was fulsomely invested in the modern Illinois wishy-washy, lukewarm bland GOP tradition: liberal, evasive about party philosophy, pro-abort and pro-gay rights, having earlier contributed to Mayor Richard M. Daley. Thus she was in sync with a long line of liberal Republican losers including Lynn Martin, the ex-Labor secretary under the first Bush, who got only 33% against incumbent Paul Simon. She was a natural for committee endorsement.

But there were those who would not give up. Notably attorney Steve McGlynn of Belleville, the party’s pro-life vice chairman, and Maureen Murphy, of suburban Chicago, another solid conservative. Point man for Keyes was a Protestant state senator, Dave Syverson of Rockford. And good offices were supplied by one J. Dennis Hastert, speaker of the U.S. House who, while not a committeeman and not present, supplied his formidable weight to the Keyes candidacy.

And inside the closed-door committee, the vetting process of Barthwell rolled fast and furiously. Barthwell was asked to explain her own confessed status as an ex-drug addict. Committeeman Murphy, an able prosecutorial mind, led the questioning. "You hate her!" yelled one liberal. Murphy turned to an alleged sexual harassment charge against Barthwell (yes, women can be accused of sexual harassment, too).

Finally, in a key vote Barthwell was edged out by the man who wanted the job passionately because he sought to do battle with Obama on a host of outrageous State Senate votes: Alan Keyes. Keyes who had flown to Chicago for an interview, announced he would accept, declaring that at this late date he couldn’t promise victory but that he would wage the most energetic fight of his career. Thus, with only a handful of votes to spare, Illinois’ GOP turned the corner on its errant liberalism in favor of a man of conviction, a Catholic scholar no less.

Illinois became the first state in U.S. history to have two African American nominees seeking the Senate, both Harvard graduates (Keyes with a Ph.D. and Obama, the first black to edit the Harvard Law Review). And on the Sunday following his nomination, at a suburban restaurant jammed with cheering, sweating supporters, Keyes ticked off an indictment of Obama based on his own voting record. Together with his wife, Keyes moved into a modest house in heavily Democratic suburban Calumet City, far from the Hyde Park University of Chicago neighborhood where Sen. Obama lives.

The Obama record includes a vote, in April 2002, against the bill to protect live babies born of botched abortions. In the U.S. Senate even hard-line Democrats had supported the measure: not Obama when the bill came up in Illinois. In the U.S. Senate many strongly pro-abort liberals voted for a partial-birth abortion ban: not Obama when the vote came up in Illinois, twice voting "present" rather than state his convictions. In 2001 he voted "present" on a bill to notify parents when their minor children seek an abortion.

In 1999 he voted against requiring school boards to put Internet pornography filters on school computers meant for students’ use only. He twice voted "no" on a bill to let school districts require disruptive students to complete suspensions before being readmitted in a new school district. He voted "present" on a bill that passed the State Senate with heavy majorities requiring students who fire guns on school grounds to be prosecuted as adults.

In 2001 he voted against a bill that added extra penalties for crimes committed in furtherance of gang activities. He voted against a bill making it a criminal offense for accused gang members, free on bond or on probation, to associate with known gang members. In 1999 he was the only state senator to vote against a bill prohibiting early prison release for criminal sexual abusers.

Also on tax increases, disregarding his own rhetoric on fighting the high cost of health care, Obama voted last May to hike the tax on insurance premiums. On the same day he voted to preserve Illinois’ death tax, hike taxes on casino visitors, and slap new sales taxes on business.

While Democrats point to Obama’s keynote address as typifying a smooth, nonconfrontational candidacy, his campaign has received an outpouring of funds from extremely liberal PACs, including Progressive Choices ($5,000), Planned Parenthood ($5,000), the National Education Association ($5,000), and People for the American Way ($1,000), the group blocking President Bush’s judicial appointments. Sen. Hillary Clinton’s Leadership PAC gave him the maximum contribution of $10,000 as did the American Federation of Teachers and the National Abortion Rights League.

On June 7 Obama was the recipient of a good haul of radical money from George Soros, who has charged that President Bush is akin to Adolf Hitler — $60,000 total from four family members. They’re able to contribute such large amounts because under the McCain-Feingold law the limits are stretched if one of the opposing candidates was a self-funding multimillionaire (as Jack Ryan was).

Seemingly in Illinois, the secular media and the Democratic Party of Barack Obama are fused. The first assault out of the box on Keyes is the "carpetbagger issue." Yet the founders knew what they were doing when they refused to add a long-term residency requirement to candidates for the U.S. Senate. Illinois has only the provision that a candidate reside within the state by election day, November 2, 2004. Consider not only Hillary Clinton and Robert Kennedy but Texas’ Sam Houston.

Born in Tennessee, Houston served as congressman and governor there, then moved to Texas where he became president when it was a republic and later its senator.

And also Illinois’ most peripatetic second senator, James Semple: Born in Kentucky, he moved to Illinois, then to Missouri, back to Kentucky where he got a law degree, moved back to Illinois where he served as state attorney general, then representative and House Speaker, then to Bogota, Colombia as charge d’affaires, back to Illinois for election as State Supreme Court justice, then to the U.S. Senate.

But even given that Keyes may well lose, due to his late start, why does his campaign engender enthusiasm? Because the candidacy gives the nation’s most articulate defender of life a platform that can work a change on the character of the GOP in Illinois and the nation — and that’s not an exaggeration.

Here the Lincoln-Douglas debates are a stirring example. Abraham Lincoln was by no means the firebrand for abolitionism that Keyes is for life, but in debating Sen. Stephen A. Douglas he stirred the nation’s conscience. Lincoln lost the U.S. Senate election, but went on to national reputation and glory.

In Illinois — it is fair to say — the cause of life now has its greatest opportunity ever to become a front-centered issue.

The fact that the competitors are both African American ensures that race will be taken off the table. The issue will be the cultural swamp that threatens to infest us all. And if the national GOP were astute (about which there is considerable doubt), it would invite Keyes to address its convention to match the keynote speech Obama gave to the Democrats.

That’s why as I wrote last week — when the Keyes opportunity was only a glimmer — I was heartened.

Already Obama is trying to renege on a six-debate pledge he gave Jack Ryan. The media are pushing him to debate Keyes all six times.

To find out more about Alan Keyes’ campaign, go to his web site: www.Keyes2004.com or call 312-756-1766.

Missouri is a swing state that needs all the help it can to get Bush elected ... if Bush doesnt win Missouri, he is toast.

It seems that bashing a Republican candidate in another state with sarcasm, it might be that time is more productively spent helping Bush and Kit Bond in MO.

It seems that bashing a Republican candidate in another state with sarcasm, it might be that time is more productively spent helping Bush and Kit Bond in MO.

What makes you think Im not? Keyes is not in my state. He's going to lose. Any money diverted to Illinois is going down the tubes as part of Keyes mastubatory exercise.

As far as bashing another Republican, I would take that charge more seriously if you stood up for the so called RINOs. They are the best that you can expect in a liberal state and they do help the Republicans organize and control congress and thus the agenda.

yes I agree it looks pretty bad.

I should have packaged it differently as it wasn't my
own words, but just stuff I found others saying.

It does make me wonder however, how the MSM can tout Obama's
'black' credentials so often, when he's just as much white
as he is black.

I presume its his liberalness that tips the scale... I can
imagine if a half-white/half-black were a conservative, that
most blacks and the MSM would write him off as a 'white guy'

There are plenty of republicans who are going to lose ... more will lose if you persist in forming a circular firing squad and try to prove us once again to be the 'stupid party'.

"I would take that charge more seriously if you stood up for the so called RINOs. They are the best that you can expect in a liberal state"

oh, not that myth again ... excuse me, but I lived in Illinois ... compare how horribly RINO lynn martin did, versus the 'unwinnable' more conservative Peter Fitzgerald in 1998. RINOs have systematically destroyed the Republican party in several states (New Jersey, Cali, ...), and one of them is Illinois when they put a corrupt RINO up as Guv... he has systematically decimated the Republican party. Sometimes conservative Reaganite principles is good politics.

and btw, I am standing up to the idiots who say that they wont vote for Bush, or wont vote for Spectre. But I get no help at all from the RINO-hugging moderates who'd rather split the party with division than unite for ALL our candidates ... *you* would be a hypocrite to demand we support RINOs even when they are imperfect candidates who are wrong/disagreeable on some issues then spurn the energetic Keyes candidacy.

Take yo' Momma's advice on this race and on Keyes: "If you can't anything nice, don't say anything at all."

Lead, follow or get out of the way.

Abortion and values issues will get Keyes 5,000 precinct block walkers. Abortion will explain to Illinois voters how out-to-lunch Obama is on all the whole values issues. Obama is no moderate.

And abortion is a matter of principle that explains Keyes as a man of principles. 70% of Americans agree that we should protect unborn human life, it's a winning principle. And Keyes has more than 1 issue. Quit misunderestimating Keyes ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1193693/posts

I made the same arguments 4 years ago that you're making now. There were a lot of Freepers committed to Harry Brown, Howard Phillips, Pat Buchanan, etc. There were even "Freepers of Note" who I will not name, who made scathing ridiculous statements against Dubya. I spent a lot of time, not necessarily defending Bush, but making the case that we had to stick together and keep Gore out of the Whitehouse.

I was so sure that we were going to see change on the domestic front having control of 2 branches of government. Other than fighting the war, Bush has been a dismal failure over all. Forget about Republican pork. He won't even veto Democrat pork. He generates his own brand of pork. I could go down a long laundry list of things he has done wrong. But I won't because I'll bet you could cite them on your own without my help.

Here's something for you to consider. Remember how the Repubs fought Clinton tooth and nail during his entire administration? Even when they were still a minority...Phil Gram "..over my cold dead body.." regarding HillaryCare '93? I don't see that kind of behavior from them anymore except for a few conservatives like Tancredo. They see a Bush Administration as an opportunity to bring bacon home to there districts.

Having said that, I don't look forward to a Kerry presidency but I don't look forward to another 4 years of the same-o-same-o either.

70% of Americans agree that we should protect unborn human life, it's a winning principle

Only on partial birth abortion. More like 35-40% support Keyes position on abortion. That is not a winning principle considering that those that are anti-abortion are already going to vote Republican, unless they were going to sit on their asses like they usually do.

PS. okay smartypants - the 3 conservative issues better than aborion that will win Keyes the Senate race are: ... ???

How about 1) making the tax cuts permanent, 2) supporting Bush in his desire to appoint strict constructionists judges to the courts, and 3)doing what is necessary to win the war on terror.

If those arent enough, you could add in improving education in the state (e.g., vouchers anyone?) or even a constitutional ammendment to ban gay marriage. More than 70% of us in the next state over supported a ban on gay marriage and more than half of those voting were Dems because of a hotley contested Dem Gubernatorial primary.

Of course, Osama Bin Keyes picks as his top two issues abortion (which is not going to persuade anyone to change their vote)and reparations for blacks (which will persuade Illinois Republicans that they have committed suicide and just dont know it yet).

How about 1) making the tax cuts permanent, 2) supporting Bush in his desire to appoint strict constructionists judges to the courts, and 3)doing what is necessary to win the war on terror."

Keyes has publicly supported all 3.

"If those arent enough, you could add in improving education in the state (e.g., vouchers anyone?) or even a constitutional ammendment to ban gay marriage."

And he supports those issues publicly and eloquently.

Keyes would be well-served with a 'values, economy, security' campaign... and so far he hasnt disappointed on that imho.

Dont fall for the media spin that tries to paint the most negative light on conservatives, including him.

And he supports those issues publicly and eloquently. Keyes would be well-served with a 'values, economy, security' campaign... and so far he hasnt disappointed on that imho. Dont fall for the media spin that tries to paint the most negative light on conservatives, including him.

Then perhaps he should learn to keep his mouth shut and avoid the traps set by the media. He seems to openly enjoy stepping into every trap they set so he can listen to himself pontificate whether anyone else is listening or not. Real politicians learn how to take the press questions and give them the answer they want, rather than making the soundbyte of the day abortion,abortion, abortion or worse yet reparations. That is not what he shoudl be talking about if he wants to win. That is why I and many others dont think he has any desire to win, he just wants to enjoy being the candidate again.

Im curious... How is that not a conservative way to answer the reparations issue? I agree I would say pound sand to them but at least this way the only way anyone will benefit from it is to work and earn. So long as business are not excempt (i.e if you are an African American and you own a business you pay as a business) and S.S. is paid by employers I have no issue.

Im sure that there are other things to be done to tweak it more but it sounds like an interesting Idea..

Im sure that there are other things to be done to tweak it more but it sounds like an interesting Idea..

I bet if Obamma or Jesse Jackson had come up with the same idea, you wouldnt be saying that. Why should I pay more taxes because of something that happened before my grandparents came here. Bull. If that is conservative we might as well had all voted for McGovern back in 72.

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