Well, you told me!
Posted on 07/21/2008 4:13:00 AM PDT by rdb3
Alan Keyes' Wrecking Crew
By FrontPage Magazine
FrontPageMagazine.com | 7/21/2008
SINCE BEING REJECTED FOR THE REPUBLICAN AND CONSTITUTION PARTY PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATIONS, perennial candidate Alan Keyes is now attempting to inflict himself upon the American Independent Party. A high-decibel Harold Stassen, the Energizer Loser keeps running, and running, and running… Predictably, he failed in the democratic contest for this one-state party’s byline, but his supporters are attempting to force him onto the ballot, anyway.
For those who hadn’t noticed Keyes’ latest presidential campaigns (or perhaps his perpetual campaign, spilling over leap-years), Keyes ran unsuccessfully for Senate in Maryland twice (1988 and 1992), then for the Republican presidential nomination in 1996. When his low poll numbers excluded him from a debate, Keyes went on a hunger strike and was handcuffed for chaining himself to a TV station. In 2000, he ran again for president, garnering third place in Iowa. After pulling out, he launched a “citizens” effort to draft himself as President Bush’s running mate. In 2004, he hopped across the state to run for U.S. Senate in Illinois against a rising star named Barack Obama. During that race, Keyes supported exempting all black Americans from taxation for a generation or more, as a form of slavery reparations. Then he drafted himself into the 2008 presidential race, later claiming a swell of “grassroots” support in the Iowa Straw Poll, where he failed to receive a single vote. Long after serious candidates who had some reasonable grounds for running – like governors Tommy Thompson and Jim Gilmore – had pulled out, Keyes browbeat his moderator for insufficient attention.
When we heard of Keyes’ entry into the ’08 race last October, we wrote:
Keyes’ performance in the [Republican] debates could have a powerful impact on the presidential nomination – of the Constitution Party. If a moderate is nominated, look for an independent banner on Keyes’ website that reads, “We Need Alan Keyes to Run Third Party!”
Sure enough, Keyes’ website now proclaims, “Independent Alan Keyes for President.”
The Ambassador left the Republican Party in mid-April, just one week before the Constitution Party’s National Convention in Kansas City. According to party officials, CP party founder Howard Phillips asked Keyes not to run for the nomination, as he did not represent the party’s ideology. Phillips put his mouth where is money was. Although Phillips once called Keyes “a man I admire profoundly,” Phillips denounced Keyes as “a Neocon” who believes in multiple positions not shared by the Constitution Party, such as continuing membership in the UN, NATO, and the IMF; U.S. foreign aid – and criticizing Ron Paul’s extremist Iraq position. Carrying water for Ron Paul, Phillips declaimed:
If the Paul people are to support anyone, it is Chuck Baldwin they should be supporting, and that is something we can look to. Ron Paul has attracted scores of thousands of supporters and he’s got an estimated $35 million in the bank. [T]hose supporters and those resources can become an asset to this party if we nominate a candidate who has been a friend of Ron Paul, not an enemy of Ron Paul.
Alan Keyes was soon crushed in his bid for the CP nomination by Chuck Baldwin, a Florida minister and the party’s 2004 vice presidential nominee, who won by a final vote total of 383.8-125.7. (We don’t know which delegates counted as eight-tenths of a man for Baldwin, nor seven-tenths for Keyes, but the CP is composed of Originalists….) He graciously refused to endorse Baldwin, grousing that he had been betrayed yet again:
It seems that the pattern of my political career…I have experienced this pattern on several occasions in the course of my political life, where people invite me in, and then they kill me, they invite me in, and then they kill me, they invite me in and then they kill me…I kind of represent, in political terms, the abortion.
One of the delegations Keyes’ carried in the CP convention was its California state affiliate, the American Independent Party. The AIP announced late last month it switched its “affiliation nationally with the newly-formed America’s Independent Party of Fenton, MI.” (You can visit the A’sIP website here.)
Just over a week ago, the AIP nominated Alan Keyes for president.
Apeing the AIP
The trouble is, according to party members, no national affiliation change has occurred, and the AIP presidential candidate for 2008 will be Chuck Baldwin, not Alan Keyes.
According to them, the party has been hijacked by its former chair, Ed Noonan. They say they deposed Noonan in late June and nominated Chuck Baldwin. Reports state Noonan and a handful of others met online and nominated Keyes. There are also irregularities with the official party website. The URL is www.aipca.org. However, that site currently redirects all viewers to www.aip-ca.com, a website run by Ed Noonan. The Jim King-wing of the party opened atemporary website on blogspot.
It appears not only did Alan Keyes noisily elbow his way into the 1996, 2000, and 2008 GOP presidential elections – crying “racism” whenever he failed to receive glowing coverage – but he was also rejected by the Constitution Party and the American Independent Party of California in favor of a Florida minister.
Keyes, whose entire career has been based upon exploiting conservative white guilt – after all, what has he done to deserve to be considered a presidential candidate of any party? – is now running fourth party. And if true, his supporters are trying to hijack the nominating process.
The AIP is the third largest party in California, not because any of its members believes in its platform, but because voters are automatically enrolled in the AIP if they say they want to register “independent.” The confusion is so rampant that San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom’s fiancée, Jennifer Siebel, registered with the ultra-conservative AIP. A full two percent of California voters registered with the AIP, likely with the same confusion.
The late William K. Shearer founded the AIP to advance George Wallace’s 1968 presidential campaign. The AIP nominated John G. Schmitz (a John Birch Society conservative and the father of teacher-predator Mary Kay Letourneau); in 1976, the AIP nod went to Georgia’s segregationist Governor Lester Maddox; in 1980, to former Louisiana Congressman and segregationist John Rarick. The following cycle, the AIP formally aligned itself with the Populist Party run by The SPOTLIGHT’s Willis Carto. But when the Populists nominated David Duke in 1988, it was a move even the AIP could not stomach, casting its lot with Howard Phillips’ Constitution Party (then known as the U.S. Taxpayers Party) in 1992.
Until the state weighs in on the intraparty dispute, Keyes’ vice president is Wiley Drake, a Southern Baptist pastor and radio announcer in Buena Vista, CA. As Second Vice President of the Southern Baptist Convention, Drake endorsed a candidate for U.S. Senate on official letterhead. His bid for presidency of the SBC this June garnered less than one percent of the voting delegates. When Americans United for Separation of Church and State looked askance at his political endorsements, Drake asked his followers to unleash “Imprecatory Prayer” – prayer for the destruction or death of his enemies. Among his suggested prayers was Psalm 109, which states, “let Satan stand at his right hand…Let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places… neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children. Let his posterity be cut off: and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.”
Quite a pro-life ticket he and Keyes make.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Keyes is another Buchannan — he’ll run on any party’s ticket that will have him.
Keyes didn’t impress me during his appearance in the GOP debate.
Instead of answering the questions asked, he would rail against the moderator and say he wasn’t getting enough face time. He made his debate appearance all about ‘him’ and his mistreatment by the moderator (aka, Victim).
Keyes often expresses some good conservative basic ideas; the problem is the personality with which he expresses them. He turns people off.
Now there is something I didn't know. Anyway, Alan Keyes is just a disturbed individual.
/;-)
Getting completely blown out by Obama once wasn’t enough for Keyes.
The tragedy of Alan Keyes, and other third party candidates as well, is that they just cannot get it through their head that “the idea” is more important than “the man.”
Had Keyes approached the situation with a plan to make the ideas a reality, his tactics would have been very different than they were, and likely far more successful.
Instead of initially advancing himself, he should have first created a pool of good national candidates who would also advocate those ideas. People who would keep Keyes agenda in the spotlight, even when he was not around. People with their own momentum.
At first, the emphasis would not be on the Presidency, but on ordinary congressional seats where neither major political party was particularly strong, and voters were independent-minded. Even winning just a few seats would amplify the voice of him and his comrades enormously. Both major parties would have to start listening.
He could bring far more resources to bear in these “little seats” than could the major parties, because they would be too busy fighting each other.
And with just a handful of seats to back his play, his movement would gain in strength and wealth, so that just two years later again the odds would again be on his side.
A rising tide raises all boats.
Once again Horowitz’s personal animus against Alan Keyes causes him to step in it big time:
California Secretary of State Says Alan Keyes is AIP Presidential Candidate
July 21st, 2008
On July 21, the California Secretary of State recognized the American Independent Party state convention that was held in Sacramento, instead of the one that had been held a week earlier in Los Angeles. The Secretary of State’s Chief Counsel, Pam Giarrizzo, said that the Secretary of State made the decision based on the fact that Ed Noonan is listed in the records as the state chair. She said the office has no knowledge of who was at either convention, and of which convention had the larger attendance of state central committee members. She had no memory of how former Secretary of State March Fong Eu handled a somewhat similar situation differently, in 1988, for the Peace & Freedom Party. She said she might or might not look into the 1988 records, but said also that the decision is final.
Since the convention chaired by Ed Noonan chose presidential electors pledged to Alan Keyes, he will be the American Independent Party presidential nominee unless the other faction is able to sue successfully.
I’m sorry to interrupt this hate fest, but what has Keyes ever done to any of you?
This is a supposed to be a free country where people get to peruse politics any way they want.
People like Keyes and Buchanan bring up issues that are being ignored or lied about. That’s a good thing - if you all would just stop crying like little girls because someone acts different than you.
Well, you told me!
Maybe so, but he still won't win.
Thanks for posting. You are correct and it is a sad day indeed when this forum becomes a bashing board for conservatives who at least stand up and are counted. But typical of the American voter who aligns themselves with political party rather than principle.
Thanks. Maybe there’s a new day coming.
Amen Donna.
Heaven forbid the people actually have a choice to vote for in November.
That’s good news. I was wondering who California Secretary of State Debra Bowen was going to put on the November ballot (despite the inevitable lawsuit from the Jim King faction)
What year was it that he was in the mosh pit?
I will seriously consider voting for Alan Keyes come November. Unless McCain can demonstrate that Conservatives are at least as important to him as illegal aliens.
It's only when Republicans start acting with honor and integrity again will they become a force again. But it appears too late for the neo-Whigs. They're more interested in winning without integrity than winning with integrity, which ultimately results in losing. Pity.
Is Connie Hair still working with Keyes?
I don’t know.
The whole piece is shot through with ignorance and misrepresentations. And that’s being generous. That’s one of the little ones.
Nope.
Great post. You nailed it.
Like that's gonna happen.
Hey, at least we've managed to give you a true conservative choice. That's more than anyone else can say at this point.
What could be more horrifying and threatening to a pretender than someone who reflects truth and purity of heart? (David Gergan comes to mind. Anyone remember him??)
That is why they unload with unbridled fury on Alan Keyes and would quake with fear at having to criticize a blatent Stalinist commie pinko like the Obama Nation. And yet, they portray themselves as conservatives of one label or another and seek self survival and promotion as paramount, with stated beliefs only a path to that success.
These pretenders always come to mind when I see such screaming at a decent man, such desperate efforts to demean and ridicule. Unfortunately, the lightly informed hear those claims and accept them naively believing the source is as pure in motive as they are themselves. The more they scream and fling their own chunks, the greater I consider the purity of their target.
8mm
Or maybe he is believed simply because people want something in which to believe. "The readiness for self-sacrifice," wrote Eric Hoffer in "The True Believer," "is contingent on an imperviousness to the realities of life. . . . All active mass movements strive, therefore, to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world. They do this by claiming that the ultimate and absolute truth is already embodied in their doctrine and that there is no truth nor certitude outside it. . . . To rely on the evidence of the senses and of reason is heresy and treason. It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible."
I have noticed this also. It is one thing to disagree, another to present vicious or false charges against him.
Thank-you, it needed saying!
We support Keyes not for the color of his skin, but by the content of his character, a trait sorely lacking with many in the neo-Whig (Republican) Party. We support Keyes for his advocacy for our heritage, our Declaration, our Constitutional rights and liberties, our national sovereignty, traditional family values and an end to the abortion holocaust, to name just a few of his traits.
I would ask the Horowitz ilk what McCain has done to be considered as a candidate of his party, when he clearly shows disdain for the Republican platform and Republican heritage, plus disdain for our Constitutional rights and liberties, which should automatically disqualify him from consideration at the ballot box.
But of course people keep falling into the same mindset trap with short-sighted, two-dimensional, two-party thinking that has only ensured the lowest common denominator, mediocrity, and destruction of our rights and liberties one slice at a time until there is nothing left to be sliced, except our necks.
Out of the multitude of malignancies in this pile of Horowitz excrement, you may well have pointed out the stinkiest sentence.
I would ask the Horowitz ilk what McCain has done to be considered as a candidate of his party, when he clearly shows disdain for the Republican platform and Republican heritage, plus disdain for our Constitutional rights and liberties, which should automatically disqualify him from consideration at the ballot box.
But of course people keep falling into the same mindset trap with short-sighted, two-dimensional, two-party thinking that has only ensured the lowest common denominator, mediocrity, and destruction of our rights and liberties one slice at a time until there is nothing left to be sliced, except our necks.
You've expressed my views better than I could have myself.
Unfortunately I believe that the only way to get a third party started is via some sort of personality cult. Basically some very famous person of good character with a reasonably coherent political philosophy would need to run for president as an independent.
If he succeeds then a party can be built around him that incorporates his personal philosophy into its platform.
Another possibility is for some good government types (that could be members of either party) to work their way up from mayors to governors. Along the way they would stay in touch and formulate a basic philosophy that would probably be more commonsense and less ideology.
At some point they could disassociate themselves from their several parties, form a new one, and choose one amongst them as their presidential candidate.
Most people respond primarily to individual people rather than philosophies.
A bunch of pointy-headed intellectuals in a room with the exactly correct conservative position on every issue can only get you so far in the political realm.
A cult of personality candidate will fail for two reasons. First of all, because he has no lateral support, only grass roots. Without organization, he is doomed to failure. Second because even if he wins, he has no way to bargain with anyone for anything. Obstructionism accomplishes nothing by itself.
The Republicans had a brilliant idea with the Contract With America, which was a short list of promises, clear and unambiguous. If a third party would create such a list, and use it as part of their standard campaign for all seats, they would gain seats.
However, to multiply the effect of that idea, they should poll the public about which of their platform ideas are most popular, and make those the Contract promises. Doing so is not hypocritical, because you do not abandon the less popular agenda items, you just don’t emphasize them in your advertising.
The public loves a clear statement of principles. And every one of your candidates that signs on to those principles gives the public a reason to support them, instead of the two major parties.
Most importantly of all, winning congressional seats really matters in getting your agenda passed, even more than the presidency. A small bloc even in one house, that can swing the vote to either party, can get much of what it demands.
It is leveraging its votes to far more power than it should have. But that is the way a third party stops being a joke and gets real power.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of interest.
I confess I think Keyes is a loon. Sorry.
LOL, he is. A talented orator but a loon.
LOL! I thought I was going to offend you!
The truth cannot offend. I have met Alan, I watched him scam a lot of good people who believed in him. It is sad to see the waste of such a talented orator.
*********************
I am a Fred Thompson supporter. (I know, I know)
He was constantly criticized for his oratory, yet his words were inspiring. Ach.
I'm interested more in what a man says, than in how he says it.
I like Fred, I like Hunter and many more. Come November I will vote for McCain.
Let us pray that our votes keep Obama out of the White House.
(At least now there's someone I can definitely, in good conscience, vote for in November, if I can't get drunk enough to pull the lever for McCain.)
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