Hearing a groundswell that I must have missed, Alan Keyes has apparently filed to run for president again. He is reportedly going to participate in the the Values Voter Debate, joining all the Republican presidential candidates — even John Cox — with the, uh, minor exceptions of Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, and John McCain.

Keyes finished third in Iowa in 2000 and did pretty well in a few other states (notably Utah) but mostly registered in the low single digits. After two failed presidential candidacies, three failed Senate races in two states, and a series of controversial pronouncements, conservatives might get tired of his shtick. The 2004 Illinois Senate race — which somebody urged him to forgo –against Barack Obama was probably a bridge too far, even for the people who liked hearing Keyes in debates but never seriously contemplated voting for him.