Things aren't working out well for Alan Keyes. The perennial
candidate with a worse electoral track record than Harold Stassen
spent most of his adult lifetime in the Republican Party. He lasted
in the Constitution Party for less than two weeks. After his defeat
at the hands of relatively unknown members of a small third party,
Keyes the pro-life stalwart analogized his political career to an
abortion.
On entering the race, Keyes was the biggest-name presidential
candidate the Constitution Party had ever attracted. But he
disagreed with the paleoconservative party's
positions on the Iraq war and foreign policy more generally.
Keyes's supporters tried to modify the platform and were
overwhelmingly defeated. Shortly afterward, so was Keyes
himself.
Chuck Baldwin -- a preacher, radio show host, and columnist who
actually agreed with the Constitution Party's platform on the
issues in question -- beat Keyes 3-to-1, a margin worthy of Barack
Obama or Barbara Mikulski. Paleocons praised the Constitutionalists for sticking to their
principles, which they did, but Keyes's odd
notions about how to win friends and influence people also
contributed to his drubbing.
Many activists wanted Keyes to play some role in the
Constitution Party but had misgivings about making him the nominee.
He managed to alienate members of this group by offending them in
conference calls and refusing to consider the vice presidential
slot, which ended up going to Darrell Castle. "It would have been
best for Alan to take a cue from the Bible," said Georgia state
chairman Ricardo Davis. "When you come into the room, don't go for
the nice chair in the front given to those who are honored lest you
be told to get up and get to the back pew. It is better to come in
the room and take the back pew and have someone say 'Alan, come and
take the seat of honor.'"
Keyes wasn't exactly magnanimous in defeat, either. He said that
the party whose nomination he sought was "governed by a spirit of
dictatorship and despotism." In the same interview, Keyes protested that he had been
invited into the Constitution Party and then likened
himself to a fetus being aborted in the womb:
In the act of procreation, people are joyfully,
ecstatically, with great joy in every fiber of their being, saying
"yes" to the coming of that new life. And then in abortion, they
kill it. So what, in fact, my political career is, is the paradigm
and pattern of that which I am trying to stop for the child. I kind
of represent, in political terms, the abortion. You're invited in,
then they kill you. You're invited in, then they kill
you.
Debates about whether Keyes was shafted by
Howard Phillips and the Constitution Party will
rage on among third-party aficionados for years, like the arguments
between those who say Pat Buchanan took over the Reform Party in
2000 and the brigade members who maintain he was robbed by Ross
Perot. (Though at least Buchanan actually
won the party's
nomination.) But there's a larger question: How did a man who was
once considered a conservative rising star and one of the more
promising young Reagan administration alumni turn into the punch
line of a cruel political joke?
It seems hard to believe now, but Keyes was once in heavy
demand. Jeane Kirkpatrick brought him into her United Nations
delegation, a career move that came back to haunt him in the
out-of-the-UN Constitution Party. In 1988, the Maryland Republican
Party recruited Keyes to run for the Senate to replace another
candidate. The Illinois GOP did the same in 2004. In 1992, Keyes
actually beat 14 other candidates in a Republican primary to make
his second run for the Senate, his only win at the ballot box (one
wonders if any of the others put "lost election to Alan Keyes" on
their resume).
Keyes even launched his first presidential bid after being
drafted by a group of pro-life Georgians who were impressed by a
series of impassioned speeches he made on behalf of their preferred
candidate in the 1994 GOP gubernatorial primary. His second run for
the White House won him third place in the Iowa caucuses, a million
primary votes, and a short-lived talk show on MSNBC.
Yet for all Keyes's rhetorical brilliance, there are reasons he
has found himself on the losing end of so many landslides. "I would
rather bankrupt my family than live any longer with policies and
views that are bankrupting my country, morally as well as
financially," he thundered during his 1992 Senate race. "I will
campaign against Barbara Mikulski on foot in the streets and sleep
in homeless shelters if I have to, but I will never give up." In
fact, Keyes paid himself an $8,500-a-month salary out of his
campaign funds and then denounced national Republican leaders for
racism when they did not give him more money and a prime speaking
slot at the convention.
When Keyes accepted the Illinois Republican Party's invitation
to jump state lines to run against Barack Obama, it became
difficult even for some of his admirers to deny that he was a man
in search of a podium. From arguing that Jesus Christ would not
vote for Obama to calling Mary Cheney "a selfish hedonist," he also
became a shrill parody of himself.
By the time Keyes appeared onstage at the Des Moines
Register debate last December, conservatives had grown tired
of his shtick. Asked what he was actually doing to campaign for the
GOP presidential nomination, Keyes insisted to National Review's Byron
York, "I have had several campaign events here in Iowa, but I will
not define those events as you do." How did he define them, then?
"[E]very time somebody comes forward and takes the [online pledge
to support Keyes], that's an Iowa event." And every time a bell
rings, an angel gets his wings.
There is no word yet on whether Keyes will soldier on as an
independent, but his national political director is sore with the
Constitution Party. "They just rejected the most qualified man to
be president," he sulked to the Kansas City Star. "Chuck Baldwin
will have no impact on this election whatsoever." No electoral
defeat has had any impact on Keyes before, so why should this time
be any different?
topics:
Foreign Policy, Barack Obama, Abortion, Constitution, Iraq, United Nations, NATO
