Alan Keyes has been in the news every day since he was asked to run for Senate in Illinois. Most media stories are snide rebukes, calling Keyes a “carpetbagger,” but Keyes doesn’t let it bother him. As he gets better known he’ll be taken more seriously.
Keyes Undaunted
In an August 17 Sun-Times story Keyes explains that abortion is terrorism, saying that the terrorist consciously targets innocent human life. What is done in an abortion? Someone consciously targets innocent human life. The evil is the same, so “the evil we fight is but the shadow of the evil we do.”
But William O’Rourke in Sunday’s Sun-Times calls Keyes’ campaign make-believe, muddying the Illinois Senate race, and making a fool of himself and the people of Illinois. Maudlyne Ihejirika in the Times Sunday says that people at the Bud Billican Parade screamed their lungs out for Obama, but were “mostly quiet and ambivalent toward Keyes.”
Some shouted, “Tell Alan Keyes to go back to Maryland.” Undaunted, Keyes took the opportunity to hammer on Obama’s stand on gay marriage and abortion.
Columnists on Keyes
Eric Zorn in the Tribune says Keyes saddled the wrong horse in the race for the Senate, even opposing the born alive bill in which a born baby is left to die. Zorn apparently never heard Jill Staneck’s testimony of what goes on in some Chicago Hospitals.
Zorn is upset that pro-lifers paint legislators who support abortion as vicious extremists. He refers to “decent people” being indifferent to the deaths of babies that could live on their own.. Zorn at least tell us we are free to vote for Keyes if we want. Thanks, Eric. Nice of you to let us vote for a humane human being instead of a baby-killer.
Amity Shlaes in Tuesday’s Tribune makes the logical conclusion that if all blacks in Illinois are Democrats, and all Democrats are pro-abortion, then all Blacks are pro-abortion, so Keyes doesn’t have a chance of getting the Black vote. But Alan Keyes and some of us still believe in the power of logic, and that it isn’t logical to kill off your children. If abortion is carefully explained to them, most Blacks are pro-life. They’ve just been lied to for so long they’re confused. Amity says the big show of 2004 may well take place here in the Land of Lincoln.
Laura Washington in Monday’s Times says, “The antics of the bombastic and off-base Keyes will keep political junkies entertained for the next couple of months,” but that a win is a very long shot. She calls Keyes, “The Motor Mouth from Maryland.”
Rev. Jesse Jackson writes that the real test of Republican support for Keyes is whether he’ll be invited to speak at their National Convention in New York.
Who’s the Extremist?
During a brief meeting Sunday between Keyes and Obama at the Indian Independence Day parade in Chicago, Keyes told Obama the test of a candidate is that he says what he means and means what he says, referring to Obama’s reneging on a pledge to have six debates when he thought his opponent was Jim Ryan, but cut it to two when he learned he’d debate Alan Keyes.
Obama told Keyes, “Don’t just go and keep on talking; you’ve got to do a little listening. You’re not a very good listener.” Maybe there was nothing worth listening to.
Derrick Jackson in the Chicago Tribune Monday says Keyes looks “loony” even to moderate Republicans like Jim Edgar and Jim Thompson, who are mostly silent on the Keyes candidacy. But Dennis Byrne makes one thing clear in Monday’s Tribune:
There’s no ambiguity about abortion. Obama voted against state legislation that would have protected infants born alive during an attempted abortion. His position is roughly based on the logic that once a woman decides that her fetus should not live, it can’t be kept alive outside the womb, even when it meets the commonly accepted definition of a person.
And they call Keyes an extremist.
Obama thinks he reflects the thinking of the people of Illinois. Keyes has only ten weeks in which to prove him wrong. Get on your knees and pray and get out there and help.
