Seeing Alan Keyes’s performance in his recent debate with Barack Obama, it was fascinating how pleased Keyes was with himself when clearly he was revealing the depths of his delusion.
One might describe Keyes as principled. One might describe him as principled to a fault. One might describe him as being in possession of a foolish consistency, completely divorced from the real world.
Apparently, Keyes manages to lose support each time he speaks in public. I suppose the results will show how many Illinois voters are willing to pull the “Republican” lever no matter what.
But it’s a fascinating race. In the end, will Keyes’s viewpoint benefit from his campaign performance? Is his radical reactionary right-wingism going to continue to grow stronger in the Republican party, and, thus, in the halls of Congress and the state houses?
But Barry Goldwater’s thumping in 1964 was not a nail in the coffin of his (relatively moderate) conservatism. It was just the beginning. I wonder if Keyes could be the next Goldwater?
Keyes is a circus act offered up as a sacrificial lamb by the Illiois GOP. Not even the craziest members of the the radical right could think that Alan Keyes would conduct a viable campaign for office, especially against a competitor as charismatic as Obama.
Alan Keyes’s only value to the GOP is that he is black. There are so few black Republicans that the party has to show off one or two to demonstrate that the GOP are not as racist as their policies would seem to make them.
I doubt it, frankly. Even the Illinois Republican party is washing its hands of Keyes already. Its head won’t even endorse him, and neither will most of the top GOP politicians in the state. National GOP leaders aren’t exactly bending over backwards to help Keyes out either–and this in a race to fill an open seat, in an election year that could potentially decide the balance of the Senate. It’s nothing like Goldwater in '64, when at the very least Goldwater was receiving the backing of the majority of the party. The GOP, to put it bluntly, has turned their back on him.
What I see in Keyes is more the apogee of religion-based politics. After Keyes, there is nowhere else to go. His campaign has been based on the premise that he will be a stronger Christian voice in the Senate than will Obama. Obama hit the nail on the head when he said during a debate, “I’m not running to be minister of Illinois. I’m running to be its U.S. senator.” Keyes is running for minister of Illinois, and it’s failing, badly. To me, Keyes’ campaign is a suggestion that there is, in fact, a limit to how much a candidate can cloak themselves in religion and religious rhetoric.
As to the future of religious–by which I mean Christian–appeals in politics, I think there’s going to be a historical limit. A smaller percentage of the population considers themselves devoutly religious; religions other than Christianity are on the rise, population-wise. The percentage of voters who are swayed by such appeals is on the decline; demographically, there will be a point where appeals to religious become politically unwise.
I doubt that. Goldwater supported gay rights and, if he were around today, certainly consider the whole proposal for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages to be–at the very least–a colossal waste of time and effort. On the other hand, if you follow Keyes’ logic, even marriages between infertile heterosexual couples shouldn’t be allowed. I also don’t think Barry would personally and openly insult Dick Cheney’s daughter because of her sexual orientation.
In any case, I don’t want to live in an America where Alan Keyes is a “moderate” conservative.
And if you follow his logic on adoption by gay couples, no person who might have reason to question his or her parentage should ever have sex with anyone for fear of accidental incest. In fact, just in case your parents might be holding something back, better avoid all relationships.
I’m in the Pacific Northwest and as such have no opinion about the Illinois race, but I’d just like to congratulate acsenray on my favorite thread title of the week.
