Lunatic Keyes challenges Constitution Party to 'create new possibility for America'

[EveningStar]

A crackpot addresses a party of crackpots.

On Dec. 2, Alan Keyes spoke at a conference of the Constitution Party in Concord, New Hampshire.

In his address, Dr. Keyes discussed the impending demise of the Republican Party and the need for the Constitution Party to be "ready" to create a "new possiblity . . . for America." He also focused on the "decisive crisis [in America] for the future of our republic."...
More, including links to full transcript and audio stream of speech. (http://www.renewamerica.us/news/070108concord.htm)

[DesertFox]

You really think Keyes is a crackpot? I think he's just not right for elective office.

[The Barbarian]

Keyes is honest and fully in accord with a Constitutional government. But he scares people. He is a thoughtful and even humorous person, however.

He'll never get nominated, much less elected.

Pity. He'd be a pretty good president.

[DesertFox]

I once thought so, back in 99. But he doesn't know how to politic. I don't, either, which is why I've never run for office.

[Dilloduck]

I once thought so, back in 99. But he doesn't know how to politic. I don't, either, which is why I've never run for office.

I think you just raise (or have) millions of dollars and hire someone to do it fo you.

[EveningStar]

You really think Keyes is a crackpot?

Yes.

My last significant encounter with the former ambassador occurred at the door of a local television station in Atlanta Georgia in the spring of 1996. The station was holding a TV debate for the presidential primary and had banned Keyes, who was then running for president. My candidate, former governor Lamar Alexander, and I had the bad timing to enter the station at exactly the moment Keyes was attempting a media stunt that included chaining himself to the front door. A minor scuffle occurred and I remember the priceless look on the normally unflappable Gov. Alexander's face when he realized that he was a split second away from becoming hopelessly chained to a frothing AlanKeyes in front a phalanx of glaring TV lights and news cameras. Zigzagging in a flash like an NFL running back, Alexander shot through the door like a rocket, evading Keyes and pulling me through in his draft alone. It was the highlight of the Alexander for President campaign in Georgia.
Link (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/467qtjpl.asp)

Attention was further distracted from Mr. Dole's absence when police handcuffed and forcibly removed one candidate, Alan Keyes, from the television studio staging the debate after he protested the station's refusal to allow him to take part. He was later released.
.
"This is a disgrace to American democracy," Mr. Keyes, a former U.S. ambassador, said Monday on NBC. "Party bosses or media bosses should not be allowed to select candidates in America."
Link (http://www.iht.com/articles/1996/03/05/camp.t_0.php)

Alan Keyes, who is seeking the Republican nomination, said he was starting a hunger strike to protest his exclusion from the Presidential debate today.

Mr. Keyes, who was not invited to participate in the debate, which was sponsored by a South Carolina business council, said undecided voters needed to hear his pro-family message.
Link (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B07E7DE1E39F932A35750C0A9609582 60)

The summary event I mentioned took place during a debate in the New Hampshire contest, moderated by Tim Russert. It was a moment when the redoubtable Keyes—a preacher without a church—stepped forward to call Sen. McCain to judgment. McCain's mortal sin was to reveal that he had been to a rock concert with his fifteen-year-old daughter and had liked a band called Nine Inch Nails.

Unfortunately, Nine Inch Nails is a heavy-metal group whose cacophonies are spiked with four-letter words. McCain's inept bid to join the popular culture was reminiscent of other failed Republican efforts, as when Ronald Reagan's staff tried to appropriate a song by Bruce Springsteen as its campaign theme back in the '80s, whereupon Springsteen threatened to sue. The Reagan team had neglected to note that the rock star was so far over the left cliff he thought the Communists were the heroes in Vietnam and Republicans the aggressors.

In New Hampshire, McCain's misstep allowed Keyes to turn his lamp of righteousness on his hapless opponent.


Keyes (sternly): Don't you think that as leaders we ought to be a little bit more serious about the kind of influences that are now destroying the lives of our children, instead of aiding and abetting the cultural murder that is taking place?

McCain (to Russert): Can I get a life-line? (laughter)

Russert: Who do you want to call?

McCain: My 15-year-old daughter. (laughter)

Keyes (glowering): I'm a father and I've got to tell you—I'm not laughing.


It was as if Keyes had caught the Senator making whoopie with the Antichrist.
Link (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=1111)

[DesertFox]

To me he sounds serious about his religion, but not lunatic.

No, he shouldn't be prez.

[Seabee]

I wouldn't mind seeing more people like him in Con-gress though.

[TheIrishman]

One thing a candidate needs is something recognizable to the public. He tried to get that recognition but went a little over board. His beliefs, for himself, and for America, are very good! I always wanted him or Perot to win. It wouldn't work well cuz a party needs background, from dogcatcher, through county officials, through state, to president. And it takes years to do that.

[HomeschoolrsRUs]

There seem to be two sides to Mr. Keyes. He is thoughtful, intelligent, well-spoken, and right on many issues. But then he goes and acts like a nutjob (chaining himself to doors, being led away in handcuffs, wild ranting, etc.)

I first became aware of him when my father was alive. He taped some kind of an issues show for me and we watched it together. My dad was very impressed by him, and even began working on his campaign. Then he went whacko, and my father was so disappointed.

If he wants to be relevant, he needs to take a backseat and help a REAL, viable candidate. He's smart enough, and has great views/points, that he could really be an asset to a campaign, if he could get a choke-hold on his "evil-twin" side.

[Naturalized-Texan]

I used to have a lot of respect for Alan Keyes, but after the antics described above and after the vicious attacks he made against his fellow Republican candidates in 2000 in a Tim Russert interview and his totally inept Senate campaign against Obama in 2004, I lost all respect for him.

[TheIrishman]

“If you assail the right of the people to honor God, then you assail the first principle of their self-government, which is that we are endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights leading to the consequence that the only form of government that is legitimate is a form of government that respects those God-given rights. No God, no republic. No God, no representation. No God, no due process. No God, no sanctity of individual rights, liberty, and life. The denial of God is an assault not only upon the people’s conscience, but upon their claim to have from God the right to govern themselves through representative institutions. The triumph of this false doctrine of separation, therefore, portends not only the persecution of our faith, but the destruction of our liberty.” —Alan Keyes