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My Republican Uncle In McLean Just Choked

ArchPundit August 13, 2004 6 Comments

if he heard this from Keyes:

How is gay marriage a threat to traditional marriage? No procreation- if you can’t “in principle” procreate you can’t get married. He carves it in such a way that infertile people can still get married- that’s “incidental”.

He and my aunt have been married for nearly 35 years and chose not to have kids for a variety of reasons. My uncle was already voting against Lee Newcom in McLean County and I think we can add the Senate race to it too. I may post his reaction when I talk to him over the weekend.

More Thompson

ArchPundit August 13, 2004 No Comments

Thompson isn’t quite ready to jump ship, but I think we’ll be seeing it happen in few weeks.

Former Gov. James R. Thompson refused to endorse Republican U.S. Senate nominee Alan Keyes on Wednesday, saying some of Keyes’ stands on the issues made him “uncomfortable.”

“I’d be inclined to vote Republican,” Thompson said. “His views are very conservative. Some of his positions would make me uncomfortable as a voter. I’m willing to give him a chance to tell the people of Illinois what his views are. I have not endorsed him.”

I personally don’t care much about the carpetbagging, though I find it funny Keyes’ view of it. My view is voters can sort that out.

Illinois Times on Keyes

ArchPundit August 13, 2004 2 Comments

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.

Big Jim’s Avoidance

ArchPundit August 12, 2004 13 Comments

Nice Dodge–can you use that line up until November 1st?

Thompson told reporters today that he thinks it’s sad that the party could not find someone from Illinois because there were a number of people who were willing to do so.

The popular former governor also says he has not endorsed Keyes or agreed to campaign for him because he does not know enough about his positions.

I think the theme of the Republicans this year is “unfortunate”

Little Richard

ArchPundit August 12, 2004 3 Comments

From Salon

A screeching religious right fanatic, Keyes, who has worn a lapel pin featuring the feet of a fetus, is Jerry Falwell as played by Little Richard

More On Campaign Debt

ArchPundit August 12, 2004 3 Comments

From the inbox, more detail on the Keyes debts which I’m still trying to figure out how he reduced over $180,000 in about a month. Or why anyone accepted that answer.

“Unpaid Debts – Keyes denies responsibility.
Keyes was happy to take $100,000/year as salary from his 1992 Senate
campaign, but when it came time to pay that same campaign’s debts, he
said: “I personally do not owe the debt that was owed by the campaign.”
That was about $45,000, which was unpaid from 1992 through the end of
1996, according to the FEC. Of course, if he hadn’t paid himself so much
money, he would have had plenty to pay off that debt.

Keyes told a reporter that the money will be paid off — by the
campaign, not by him of course — but several creditors said Keyes
hadn’t communicated with them years later. In 1995-1996, for example,
his 1992 Senate campaign received $34,821 and spent over $15,000, but he
couldn’t manage to pay off any of that debt.

Finally, some time during 1997-1998, Keyes paid off most of this money.
The FEC reports show that he spent $49,544 during that time, and
reimbursed $41,094 worth of loans, but somehow he managed to end up
still owing more than $34,000 for his 1992 Senate race at the end of the
reporting period. Presumably he took on new loans to pay the old ones
(though the FEC data doesn’t give enough detail to be sure.)

Incidentally, Keyes still owes over $200,000 on his 1996 presidential
campaign as well. At the end of 1996, he owed $350,000; since then, he
has raised over $1,000,000 for a campaign that is over, but spent even
more ($1,099,972) and only reduced his debt by $150,000.

In 1995, his campaign wrote over $20,000 in bad checks, which his
spokesman blamed on a former campaign aide.”

Some of this is more understandable. The reason he rasied over $1,000,000 while spending more is he is probably doing low dollar mail fundraising. Other wingnuts do this like Bill Federer. They send out scary mail to supporters usually with Clinton thrown in every other sentence and homosexual in the other sentences. When it works it can be lucrative, but it has huge costs in sending out that much mail. He probably lost more than he pulled in. I haven’t gone through the FEC records to check, but usually fringe candidates are best positioned to use this sort of system.