This time Kevin McCullough takes a pass on reality predicting the debates will help Keyes and predicts a narrow Keyes victory–while taking a break from hawking Swift Boat nonsense.
My prediction – the more debates the two have – the better for Keyes. The less – the better for Obama. If they can get better than four debates scheduled – Keyes wins by a nose…and it will certainly be the most entertaining political race of the year!
The last phrase is true, but hardly in a positive way.
But the best part is this
You may remember Amb. Keyes soundly drilled Senator John McCain and Governor George W. Bush as he debated in 2000.
If by drilled, McCullough means convinced the world that John McCain and George Bush were sane and rational compared to the street preacher someone accidentally let in the door, McCullough may have a point.
Jacob Weisberg of Slate had the best coverage of the debates
One: The First Republican Debate.
Alan Keyes was running against Vladimir Illych Lenin. Keyes thinks that the other side actually won the Cold War and that he is the only one who knows about this. “We must get rid of the socialist structures that control our government beginning with the income tax itself,” he declared at the outset, explaining that he would prefer to fund the federal government with tariffs, duties, and excise taxes. He then tried to pick a fight with Cokie about whether the Catholic Church had gone socialist, too. Wearing a TV-unfriendly blooming lilac tie and a shirt that matched the color of his suit, he appeared to be having some kind of fit through most of the debate. I’m not sure that his technique of simply shouting over the moderator when his time is up is going to be effective.
Two: Keyes Loses It.
The second Republican debate was enlivened by the presence of two hecklers who got inside the Dartmouth auditorium where the town hall-style forum was taking place. One, a young woman, shouted that military spending should be cut to provide better health care until she was ejected from the hall. The other, Alan Keyes, ranted and raved about a variety of topics but was allowed to remain.
Keyes is an intelligent man, but tonight he seemed truly deranged. In response to a question put to all the candidates about whether they supported a flat tax, Keyes declared that the income tax was both socialism and slavery. “The income tax is a form of tax that was advocated by Marx and Lenin because it cedes in principle to the government control of EVERY LAST DOLLAR that is made or earned in income,” he bellowed, walking to the edge of the stage. “THINK ABOUT IT,” he shouted at the audience. “If I have to give you a percentage of my income and you get to determine the percentage, how much are you in control of? HOW MUCH? ANSWER IT!!! ALL OF IT, EVERY LAST BIT OF IT.”
That’s just the beginning, read on.
Three: Bush Debates:
Keyes did not disappoint those who missed his antics last time. Asked about his allegation that the media treat him in a racist fashion, he stuck to his guns, saying he wasn’t covered by the press, despite his obvious appeal to GOP voters, because “blackout means black out.” At one point Keyes attacked Bush’s proposed tax cuts as insufficient by saying that we shouldn’t “get down on our knees and thank Massa Bush for letting us keep more of our own money,” describing that as “thinking like slaves.” After the debate, Keyes once again came into the media filing center and repeated his nutty performance from the last New Hampshire debate virtually word for word. “You ignore my successes, just as you ignored my ancestors’ successes,” he exploded at a harmless question. “And then you want to tell me you’re not a racist! You better think about it, my friend! You better think about what you’re doing!”
Nobody called Keyes on the most outrageous thing he said in the debate, that atrocities in Kosovo were mostly “propaganda” devised by the Clinton administration in order to manipulate the American public into supporting a war. It was something Noam Chomsky might have said–or Pat Buchanan.
Master Debater indeed. I’m sure Obama is hiding in the closet.
Four: The Arizona Debate: Bush Brought to Book
No news was good news for Alan.
Five: The Iowa Debate: Bush Fouls Off
if it wasn’t for the fact that Iowa is the first caucus state, would share my view that we don’t need ethanol subsidies. It doesn’t help anybody.” McCain was booed for this answer. The others–Hatch, Bauer, Bush, Forbes, and Keyes–were quick to protest their fervent support for this boondoggle, which violates every known conservative principle but draws cheers in the corn belt. McCain’s handling of this issue, in contrast to every other candidate in the race, is the definition of political courage.
Heh.
Six: Anarchy in the GOP
ut McCain’s best sport came when Keyes asked him a lunatic question premised on Keyes’ not understanding that McCain was joking when he said he was a big fan of the thrash band Nine Inch Nails. Keyes accused McCain of “aiding and abetting cultural murder” for saying he liked such music.
McCain rolled his eyes, giggled, and turned into a contestant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. “Can I get a lifeline?” he asked Russert.
“I’m a father and I’m not laughing,” Keyes responded.
“I haven’t been able to entertain you very often in the past,” McCain shot back, rolling his eyes and giggling some more.
Keyes, who was wearing the exploding lilac necktie that is often a harbinger of one of his “episodes,” also took the mayhem as a prompt to express his truest self. In other words, he jumped on the nearest soapbox and started ranting to no one in particular about such evils as atheism, homosexuality, and Tim Russert. He lacked only a sandwich board proclaiming, “The End is Near.” But Keyes has one great advantage in an up-for-grabs situation, which is that you literally can’t interrupt him. He comes up for air less often than a dolphin.
Read the whole article–I think this was one of the best pieces of political reporting to capture the feel of a debate I’ve ever read. Having watched it on TV, it certainly captured my take on it.
Seven: Iowa GOP Debate: “Waiting for Godot” Version
Have to read the whole thing.
Eight: Republicans Test Their Metal
During tonight’s Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire, Gary Bauer criticized his fellow conservative Republican Alan Keyes for flinging himself into a mosh pit to the music of Rage Against the Machine.
In case you didn’t actually watch tonight’s Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire, this really did happen. The exchange raised a number of urgent questions. 1) What was Ambassador Keyes doing in a mosh pit? (Answer: trying to secure the support of Michael Moore, the left-wing filmmaker.) 2) Does Bauer listen to a lot of heavy metal? (Answer: Apparently not, since he first called the band “The Machine Rages On.”) 3) Why is either of these no-hope religious zealots still in the race? (Answer: For the same reason they’re flinging themselves into mosh pits at the behest of radical documentary filmmakers; because they’re running to get attention.) 4) What does Orrin Hatch’s wife, Elaine, think about Korn? (Answer: We may never know.)
If you really want to get into it, Bauer had a bit of a point. Keyes, who in a previous debate accused John McCain of lending aid and comfort to fans of Nine Inch Nails, was participating, however facetiously, in the Caucasian version of the gangster culture that he thinks is destroying America. At the very least, moshing with Michael Moore was the height of hypocrisy. But if you start to take Keyes seriously enough to criticize him in this way, he has already won his battle, which is to not be ignored.
Nine: The South Carolina GOP Debate
Bush nailed!: Alan Keyes had a powerful moment–and for my money pretty much won the debate–when he blasted George W. Bush for kowtowing to an audience at Bob Jones University. Keyes himself spoke at Bob Jones, but as he noted, he confronted his audience over the university’s bigoted policies by talking about his Indian-born wife and his Catholic beliefs. Bush rolled his eyes while Keyes was criticizing him and then gave a truly lame and offensive response about how his brother married a “Mexican girl” who had become “a fabulous part of our family.” Keyes then had at him again: “Sir, you said nothing about the religious and racial bigotry that had to be dealt with.” This was the most stirring moment of the debate. McCain then piled on by saying that if he had been invited to Bob Jones, he would have done what Keyes did–gone, but condemned the ban on interracial dating as “incredibly cruel and stupid.” Keyes unfortunately compromised this very strong anti-racist message later in the debate when he stepped forward to defend racial profiling.
OK, score one for Keyes that night.
Ten: The Last Republican Debate, Please
LOS ANGELES–For a brief period earlier this week, when John McCain and George W. Bush were both threatening to participate in tonight’s debate by satellite, there was a prospect that the “live” event would consist of Alan Keyes shouting at a TV set.
Drilled ’em all right. Drilled right into laughter.
I, of course, still hold to the argument that there will be no debates. What does obama stand to gain from them?
How about integrity? If Obama refuses to debate it will be for purely selfish, political reasons. That shows an extreme lack of integrity unbecoming of any candidate for US Senate. If Obama would refuse to debate for selfish reasons, Obama would refuse to listen to his constituents, the law, or the good of people for selfish political reasons also.
It sounds like Keyes NEEDS Kohn in the debates so he has someone to claim is worse than him. 🙂 (Which he won’t be able to do.)
the “Obama would break the law for selfish political reasons” argument is bizarre hyperbole.
Keyes needs to prove he is more than some gimmick before the Obama campaign ought to take him seriously. He needs to frickin move here for one thing. He needs to get on TV for another. He needs to have a few endorsements more glowing than Hasterts “well I searched for Illinois candidates for 4 weeks and we pretty much were scraping the bottom of the barrell” for another.
A senate campaign is a serious thing and to give creedence to some one who may well be in this state just to revive his talk show career is almost as bad as allowing someone in the debate who has to list his presidency of a condo association as political experience. Note, I said almost 🙂