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Political losers often seem to lose their bearings, sometimes for a long time, and some even retire from the political scene. Richard M. Nixon went into exile for several years after his brutal defeats in the early 1960s. Michael S. Dukakis (Remember? He ran for president in 1988.), Al Gore and perhaps John F. Kerry all seem to have had trouble regaining their bearings after their losses.

So it was most refreshing last week to see Loop favorites Alan Keyes, brutally trounced by Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for the Senate in November, and Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman, whose vote count barely registered in the GOP Senate primary in Florida in August, back in the news again, getting some fine media exposure in -- what else? --the Terri Schiavo case.

Keyes, the momentary Illinoisan and perpetual loser -- races for the Senate in Maryland in 1988 and 1992, and then for the GOP presidential nomination in 1996 and 2000 -- got hammered by 40 points.

Klayman, who gained fame pursuing and exposing Bill Clinton, left his $805,000-a-year job as head of the nonprofit Judicial Watch and moved to Florida for the run.

(By the way, Klayman's salary for 2003 is substantially more than nonprofit think tank heads make, according to Congressional Quarterly. Heritage Foundation's Edwin J. Feulner Jr. earns more than $500,000, as does Christopher C. DeMuth at the American Enterprise Institute. Aspen Institute's Walter Isaacson, Brookings Institution's Strobe Talbott, the Urban Institute's Robert D. Reischauer and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Jessica T. Mathews are all paid in the low $300s.)

Klayman waged a long and spirited campaign to be the GOP's candidate and came in second-lowest of eight contenders, with about 1 percent of the vote in the primary -- just over 13,000 votes. Might seem a bit low, but it was nearly triple the vote for realtor Billy Kogut, a former liquor store owner and city councilman in Wallington, N.J., who moved to Florida in 1996.

On the other hand, Klayman received 7,500 fewer votes than a Vero Beach entrepreneur who did not campaign and dropped out of the race about a month before the primary.