This Should Make Up for Being Slow
ArchPundit
Via Rising Hegemon
That’s Stephen Douglas for those playing at home. Strangely, Keyes has been trying to pretend to be Abe the whole campaign.
Illinois Senate
The Best of Alan Keyes
It’s hard to believe Alan’s time in Illinois is almost half-way done, but here are the top ten events for Alan Keyes’ first month and one-half.
10. Jim Edgar is left Speechless when he learns Thompson isn’t supporting Keyes
9. The Economist chimes in on the Keyes selection in a biting editorial
The Illinois Republicans are not just guilty of tokenism. They are guilty of last-minute scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel tokenism. The local party has been undergoing a sort of collective mental breakdown ever since Jack Ryan’s Senate candidacy collapsed in June over a sordid sex scandal.
8. Okay, 8 didn’t really happen during the campaign, but this makes me giggle:
7. Denny Hastert, the first of many, offers up an alibi as to how Keyes was chosen.
5. GOP Political Operative Mike Murphy reflects on the Alan Keyes candidacy and then responds to his critics
4. State Senator Dave Syverson responds to General JC Christian’s suggestion that to get out Keyes out of the race, Syverson and Rauschenberger stage a three-way with Keyes at Wrigley Field.
2. Keyes Launches into Walter Jacobson during a morning interview. Keyes creates actual sympathy for Walter, something long unheard of in Chicago.
1. Keyes Declares There is a Smelly Toad in the Room
There’s much, much more if you follow this link
Keyes Campaign Goes AMWAY
The Minuteman Program just announced is a pyramid scheme of electoral politics.
You’ll have had to have had a lot of the kool aid to be aiming for these prizes:
In addition to the Keyes’ 04 Minuteman lapel pins, other perks will be assigned to each rank. Some of the currently established perks are listed below.
Sergeant = Keyes ’04 Soundtrack CD (Includes songs from the announcement and assorted speeches)
Colonel = A chance to get an in-studio seat for one of the upcoming debates
General = Time with Alan on the bus during a statewide swing
Other perks are in the works and will be announced shortly.
Songs from the announcement? Uh-huh. Any more Friend of Dorothy moments on there–I mean, we don’t want the Keyes campaign to be thought of as effeminate do we?
From the Inbox
Quickly becoming one of my and others favorite posters over at the Illinois Reader is DJRluth
“But look at this and tell me – is the guy running to be senator, or General Secretary of the Central Committee?”
“…By the very definition, Amb. Keyes is the opposite of a “carpetbagger.” Amb. Keyes was recruited and called for a transcendent mission of righteousness, victory and renewal in Illinois and beyond.
“The Amb. Keyes is performing his duty and deserves to be senator and deserves our loyalty and honor.”
Dear Leader indeed.
Most interesting–DJRluth posts from a Missouri IP for K-12 education.
Asked And Answered
Alan seems to think that clarifying his immigration positions is beneath him and repeatedly says to 848’s ….. that he asked and answered the question. Besides being utterly stupid from the point of view of someone who might actually be trying to win votes, it is absolutely hysterical.
Start at about 3:30 if you want to skip the preliminaries. The contentious part starts around 5:10.
It’s all great if you think you are the clearest spoken person in the world–not so great if you actually want to reach the public. When you are too, ahem, ‘smart’ to even clarify for NPR audiences, you have pretty much found a way to avoid connecting with a signifcant chunk of the electorate.
More fun as he tangles with Mora on Channel 2–largely consisting of Keyes being presented with evidence that he isn’t connecting well and then Keyes simply stating the world is different.
Polling Fun
In comments a bunch of folks are asking questions about what is going on with polling this year. The best place to check out the polling issues is Donkey Rising which offers some good coverage of this cycles polling.
And Greg Blankenship suggests one should be skeptical of polling which is true–especially of any single poll. I have two big days coming up this week, but I hope to do a series on polling and how to intelligently consume them without getting too up or too down. I think the one safe result we have regardless is that Alan Keyes couldn’t be sinking any faster than if you tied him to a boulder and threw him in Lake Michigan–something I’m pretty sure a few folks have considered.
That said, Leader Loopers come to his defense: (passed along from Tim Sasse in mail)
I believe that the recently published “polls” that were referenced in the title of this thread are skewed, biased deceptions perpetrated on us to tamp down the sizable and enthusiastic Amb. Keyes vote.
I have to tell you that down here in Southern Illinois, the Amb. Keyes is catching fire and building a huge bulwark of support the likes of which I have never seen before in this state.
I believe that Dr. Keyes? support is growing with each passing week and I have heard rumors of internal polls showing the Amb. Keyes pulling within the margin of error of the opponent. These true and accurate polls that I have heard show the Amb. Keyes overtaking the opponent sometime in the next couple of weeks and riding this glorious momentum to power in Nov.
Renewal with Keyes in 04 and Beyond.
That’s delusional.
Here is the silver lining: I believe that this move
indicates some very favorable internal polling that I
have been hearing about for the Amb. Keyes. I have
heard from several sources that internal polls show
the Amb. Keyes as pulling within the margin of error
and gaining momentum fast. Therefore the campaign
probably recognized that the kind of outreach that
Fran was brought on to organize was largely already
achieved and thus unnecessary at this time.Amb. Keyes is coming on strong people and it is only a
matter of time before he overtakes his opponent.
Don?t pay attention to those skewed ludicrous and
liberal polls, Keyes is building a huge bulwark of
support and is going to be virtually unstoppable by
Nov.
Anticipation Builds for Keyes
As the press tries to figure out how to bait him next (a good thing given the race is a farce), but the Leader has a different idea:
Much has been written about Alan Keyes. We owe it to ourselves, as inheritors of that noble title, ?American citizen? to see for ourselves whether this man is what others say he is. Let Alan Keyes and his issues speak for themselves. Join us for breakfast or for a run, but only if you are ready to be challenged, informed and encouraged by a man of principle.
Keyes on WYLL
His inner Marvin The Martian comes out here (MP3)
Here’s Obama’s last appearance on Air America. Franken does a spot on impersonation of Keyes that is only funnier after hearing the above.
Proft on WYLL
From what I heard of him and Patrick O’Malley, the entire argument was that because a majority of pro-life voters were backing Obama, they just didn’t have enough information–ignoring that abortion is clearly the line in this campaign and discounting the notion that, just maybe, some pro-life folks vote along other issues. O’Malley then took some shots at Jim Edgar for not doing enough. Call it foreshadowing for the Governor’s race in 2006 where O’Malley seems to be lighting the fire already.
Soros, Barack And Abu Ghraib
Berkowitz joins in with Lynn Sweet complaining about the Obama team not being forthright enough about outstate fundraising–Jeff adds in complaints about policy information–though I’ve heard and in a couple small cases experienced very different response time everyone can see what he has to say. The outstate fundraising issue is one of those issues that the public doesn’t care about, though I think all campaigns should be better about it. Ultimately, campaigns want to stay in control of their message and questions regarding outstate events takes away from that.
However, let me take issue with Jeff over this quote:
Robert Bluey writes, “Obama, however, is different from most Democrats because of his willingness to embrace the controversial Soros. Shortly after Soros equated the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Obama joined him for a New York fund-raiser [on] June 7, 2004.” See CNSnews.com, June 27, 2004
Now did Soros equate Abu Ghraib and September 11th? Yes, but not in anyway like is implied above. The above implication assumes Soros indicates the two incidents were of the same moral standing–which is not what Soros said.
Here is what Soros did say:
So for about 18 months the critical process, which is so essential to a democracy, was stifled. And it is only when things started going wrong in Iraq that it was re-opened. I think that the picture of torture in Abu Ghraib, in Saddam’s prison, was the moment of truth for us, because this is not what this nation stands for.
I think that those pictures hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself, not quite with the same force because in the terrorist attack we were the victims. In the pictures we were the perpetrators, others were the victims. But, there is, I’m afraid, a direct connection between those two events, because the way President Bush conducted the war on terror converted us from victims into perpetrators.
This is a very tough thing to say, but the fact is that the war on terror as conducted by this administration has claimed more innocent victims than the original attack itself.
What is being compared is how the US’s higher standards of morality are challenging US citizens when they see such acts being undertaken by the US Soldiers. It is because the US has higher standards of morality than Al Qaeda that it had a similar effect.
The next line is true, though certainly whether it is better in the long run is a question many would debate.
More importantly though, the only “radical” view that Soros seems to have concerns drug legalization, but people continue to spread the story that he is some sort of fringe political character.