Perhaps that's where the distinction is.
You (and seemingly the other detractors) view Keyes' unwavering conservative positions, and refusal to capitulate on principle as a negative attribute, something that makes him "unelectable" "divisive" and therefore not a welcome, or electable, member of the GOP.
I (only speaking for myself) view this a mark of a great man. An individual who will stand with integrity, and let the chips fall where they may. And if it means that he gets 1% of the vote, so be it. At least he can go home with his head held high.
Bush, with his 400 billion dollar socialist big government Medicare expansion, and his $15 billion for AIDS in Africa, and his proposed amnesty for illegal aliens, and his signing of the unconstitutional McCain campaign finance reform bill, and his applauding of the Supreme Court decision effectively leaving racist affirmative action in place, and his refusal to remove us from the WTO and other organizations that destroy our national sovereignty, and his wimpy tax cuts combined with a proposed "rebate check" for non-taxpayers, and his feverish attempts to cover-up for the treacherous Saudi regime, and his support of the unconstitutional "assault weapons" ban, and his double-standard for Israel, and the Patriot Act, and the socialist No Child Left Behind Program etc etc etc etc.. has proven that with control of two branches of government, he'll choose to be a savvy politician, but not a bedrock conservative.
This separates Keyes and Bush, and perhaps it's what differentiates our opinions about the two.
That and roughly 100 million votes.
Keyes is entertaining, and he's a great orator, but he's not electable, because he "doesn't play well with others".
When Keyes was campaigning for president, he said many things, and most of them sounded really nice -- but all of us, if we were honest, knew that (1) he didn't stand a snowball's chance in Hell of being elected, and (2) even if he was, he stood an even smaller chance of getting his proposals through Congress.
.......a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
(Shakespeare, MacBeth)