I decided a long time ago (February 2000, to be exact) that Alan Keyes wasn’t serious about getting elected to high political office:
If you’re like me, there are a lot of questions you wish someone would ask these candidates. In no particular order, here are some of mine.
[...]- “Ambassador Keyes, can Republican primary voters expect that in a future election cycle you will conduct your campaign as a serious effort to win election, rather than as merely a showcase for your admittedly brilliant oratory?“
»
A Press Conference That Will Never Happen
So, when I see an article like this at Spectator.org, well…
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.»
Out of Keyes
I imagine I disagree with the Constitution Party about Iraq and about foreign policy in general, which is why I haven’t paid much attention to them while looking for a place to put my presidential general-election vote this November. And I suspect Bob Barr, to the extent I would find him supportable were he to win the Libertarian Party nomination, is no more likely to be his chosen party’s nominee than Alan Keyes.
It’s okay. I’ve been in the wilderness before.
