The campaign is going to go through several cycles. The first was the announcement and general background of Keyes with some of the questions any candidate would face including the debt and tax issues. Next would come a flurry of attacks at Obama. Then the press will right itself and get back to exploring the typical issues one would face including the tax and debt issues, but then moving on to Keyes’ record since he hasn’t been vetted.
You can expect the tax and debt stuff over the next few days, but John K. Wilson at the Illinois Times got a jump on the vetting by going through Keyes history.
Pat Robertson anyone?
is rhetoric on the subject has been fairly strident. In a May 7 speech in Provo, Utah, Keyes said the 9/11 attacks, which killed nearly 3,200 people, were a message from God to oppose abortion: “I think that’s a way of Providence telling us, ‘I love you all; I’d like to give you a chance. Wake up! Would you please wake up?'”
More on abortion:
In 2002, Keyes argued that the abortion issue should determine the outcome of every election. “This issue alone, which I believe dominates our moral decline as a people, should decide this and every election cycle,” he said. During a campaign appearance in Bedford, N.H., in 2000, Keyes asked a class of fifth-graders, most of whom were 10 years old, “If I were to lose my mind right now and pick one of you up and dash your head against the floor and kill you, would that be right?” He then went on to tell the children that some courts and politicians think it’s OK to murder 6-month-old children.
Keyes has an apocalyptic view of America’s future unless it repents: “I do stay up at night thinking about what’s going to happen to America. I do stay up at night with a vision of our people in conflict, of our cities in flames, of our economy in ruins.”
He might have a future in post-apocalyptic movies. Maybe the Van Impe’s will bankroll him.
Beam Me Up Scottie!
A fan of J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings) and a Trekkie, he plays classical guitar and even considered a career as an opera singer.
Most amusing is perhaps Keyes use of the race card. The article goes through several examples, but the summation is:
As Kevin Merida noted in the Washington Post in 2000, “How do you explain a black man who regularly uses slavery metaphors to make his points and yet complains he has been racially typecast?”
A bunch more of fun stuff.
Update: Fixed John’s name.
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