States determine residency. In Illinois you need to establish residency by election day.
As an aside, James Shields served as a Senator from Illinois, Minnesota, and Missouri back in the 19th century. He also was governor of Oregon Territory and also challenged Abraham Lincoln to a duel. By comparison, Alan Keyes is a piker.
I think people misunderstand the Republican strategy here. This is not about winning illinois. They’ve written Illinois off.
What this is about is the black vote in the country in general. The Republicans are terrified that Barack Obama is about to become the new voice of Black America, and it will set back the Republican’s attempt at a Black outreach years. So basically, Keyes is being sent out there to say, "there are other Black people who do not believe in the things Barack Obama does, and if you agree with him you will think about being a Republican.
This is a national debate being played out in a state race.
I think Sam, that your assessment is probably true. It’s really the only meme that makes any sense at all.
I must take issue, though, when you say “I think people misunderstand the Republican strategy here” – I think everyone is trying to figure out if there is any strategy beyond sheer desperation. And, shucks, it is fun to pile on when the other side looks so silly. The GOP would never do that if the situation were reversed, right? 
That having been said, do you think it’s wise to use someone like Keyes, a personality who seems so lampoonable? Serious question.
Doesn’t seem like a very good strategy to me. Keyes is already a national figure and has never, to my knowledge, had any appeal to black voters.
And now I’m flashing back to this comic strip from Aaron MacGruder’s The Boondocks, for some reason…
The lasting image I have of Keyes is from the debates between the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000. There was a question about racial profiling by police officers, and of all the candidates, he was the only one who actually defended racial profiling. He basically said, he’s not mad at the cops for thinking all black people are criminals, he’s mad at the black people who commiting crimes for making the cops think all black people are criminals. As if that makes it OK for someone to lump all of the people of a certain race together and treat them as if they’re all the same.
No offense meant to you Keyes fans, but that was all I needed to hear to know I wasn’t going to vote for him. (Not that I’ve ever voted Republican anyway, so I guess it didn’t much matter.)
State law determines residency for the purpose of Senate eligibility. Federal law merely provides a minimum age.
No, sir. Keyes is a pro-lifer – which means he is not, by definition, a libertarian conservative.
Which is not necessarily a bad thing. Remember the Lincoln-Douglas debates? Which also revolved around a bid for an Illinois Senate seat.
No it does not.
You just contradicted yourself with your own cite. Alan Keyes is not just pro-life philosophically, he also believes that it should be made illegal. That puts him in direct contradiction the the Libertarian position that the government should stay out of it (i.e. it should be legal).
Keyes is also not exactly liberatarian on religious issues or gay rights. He’s no “Liberatrian conservative,” he’s just a garden-variety right-winger.
Turns out Keyes owes over $500,000 in unpaid campaign debt from his previous presidential races and the state of Maryland has a lien on his house for unpaid taxes. Perhaps the GOP has promised him financial assistance for his old debt if he runs - maybe he doesn’t give a shit about the race and just wants to pay his debts?
Obama needs someone like Keyes to sharpen his debating skills. The Republicans may have unwittingly set up a Lincoln-Douglas situation by nominating Keyes.
I hope they show the debates on national TV.
He said he was Libertarian Conservative not Libertarian. Could some views be predominantly libertarian and while others are predominantly consersative? I don’t know his views, but it seems to me that just having two conservative views wouldn’t necessarily make him a solely a conservative. Kucinich did not support abortion at one time, and he certainly isn’t a right winger at that time.
And a rabid pro-lifer at that. He’s called abortion another form of terrorism and has been campaigning for the Bush admin’s stance on nations that support terrorism to be applied to nations that support abortion groups.
The man believes Planned Parenthood is morally equivalent to Al Qaeda!
Not really, for one thing they recently changed it. It used to say only that the government should not pay for abortions. Abortion is not a set issue among Libertarians, with many feeling that it violates the unborn child’s right to life.
To say that you can’t be Libertarian and be against abortion is like saying you can’t be Libertarian and against slavery because that would be infringing on the slave owners property rights.
If you believe that the unborn have the same human rights as you or I then yes. However I would not have said terrorism, that has just become the new catchword for “evil” nowadays.
Here are four questions that should be asked of Keyes during a debate (not that any one of them is a “gotcha” question, but I’d really like to hear his answers to them):
In March 2000, you slammed Hillary Clinton for running for senate in a state in which she did not reside - how is your campaign any different from hers?
Are you going to move back to Maryland if you lose the election?
When you were interviewing for the nomination you were late because you couldn’t find the Loop on a map. Do you feel you know enough about Illinois to represent its interests in the Senate?
What’s your favorite sports team?
And if you think chickens have the same rights as humans then KFC is the same as al Qaeda.