This is part of a black conservatives on Obama series at The Black Snob where we study things black Republicans have said about Barack Obama candidacy for president and surmise who will vote or support for him and who will not. Previous entries were done on Amy Holmes, Condoleezza Rice, Ward Connerly and Shelby Steele.
Alan Keyes has never made sense to me.
I’ve never had much respect for him. He is, by far, one of the most disturbing and frustrating type of black Republican. He seems to only exist to provoke and destroy the aspirations of blacks who don’t share his narrow, bigoted view of America.
Keyes, most famously, was selected by the powers-that-be in the Republican Party to challenge Barack Obama’s senate campaign in 2004. He was a ringer, a carpetbagger and stooge. That the Republicans even chose him as Obama’s opponent was the ultimate insult. He was their distorted version of a "quota" hire – picking a black man with no ties to the black community in Illinois, a man with no ties to the state period, to challenge the other black man as if us Negroes would not be able to tell the difference. As if another brown face in the race would confuse us and negate the other.
I don’t like Alan Keyes. I laugh with schadenfreude when ever he fails. I mocked him, I found it infinitely hilarious when his own party locked him out of a presidential debate 1996. That they had him arrested. I chortled when Obama throttled him, his election a rebuke of the Republican’s tomfoolery and an affirmation of black intellect, of our long-history of not being fooled by these sorts of parlor tricks.
Yet at the same time I recoil in horror over Keyes. I’ve never had much respect for him, but when he was at his lowest of low for me was when he abandoned and rejected his own daughter Maya in 2005 because she dared to openly admit she was a homosexual. I don’t understand people who do this to children they have claimed to love. I have watched the mothers and fathers of gang bangers, rapists, serial killers, murders and drug runners still love their child in spite of their actions. I’ve seen them in pain, hurting for the individuals their child has harmed and still care for there child. I’ve seen people who have loved their children in spite of debilitation disability and mental illness.
Maya Keyes -- liberal, lesbian and a little lost -- finds herself out on her own. She says her parents -- conservative commentator and perennial candidate Alan Keyes and his wife, Jocelyn -- threw her out of their house, refused to pay her college tuition and stopped speaking to her.
Maya, 19, says her parents cut her off because of who she is – "a liberal queer."
How could you reject someone you claimed to you love simply because they were gay? She did not choose it. She was born this way and I was appalled. My grandmother was angry when her son, my uncle, married a white woman, but she still adjusted. She still loved her son and accepted her grandchildren, even accepting the white son my uncle adopted. My grandmother can overcome decades of racism and white hostility and you can’t accept your daughter being gay? It enraged me.
Unlike with other black conservatives who merely exalt boot-strap pulling theories, I have little compassion for Keyes and his views. And they don’t get much worse in his views on Obama. They’re far more distorted and twisted than anything conjured up by evergreen bigots like Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. Try hard not to choke your fury and bile, it’s going to be an unpleasant examination.
"He's an evil man and he needs to be stopped."
Those were Keyes words on Obama in 2007. Blog Too Sense wrote a post on Keyes based on the statements he made to a radio show. Keyes crusade against Obama does stop there. He assailed him on abortion, trumping his diatribe with an allusion to Hitler.
Blogger dnA observed thusly:
There are some people who are so desperate to be loved by white people, that they will do anything, say anything, to gain that approval. Alan Keyes is beside himself with jealousy that after selling out as much as he possibly could, even moving to Illinois to run against Obama for the Senate after calling Hillary Clinton a "carpetbagger" for doing the same thing in New York, that white people still like Obama more. He does not get it. It really eats him up inside, as you can see.
You'll note that while Keyes hates Obama, he is willing to give the German citizens who voted Hitler's Nazi Party into power the benefit of the doubt. He's all about personal responsibility, that Alan Keyes. Come on, I mean what genius could have guessed that a guy who would say something like "In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison," could POSSIBLY be anti-Semitic?
But the madness of Alan Keyes does not stop there. The longer you look at him the more unhinged and vitriolic he appears.
When Keyes ran against Obama in 2004 he declared that "Jesus would not vote for Obama."
Keyes said in a radio interview at the Republican National Convention that Jesus would not vote for Obama ... Keyes called Obama a "socialist and a liar" on a cable access news show on Monday. Obama said he wants to win big to give Keyes a spanking because Keyes wages a scorched earth campaign. Keyes then went into a very long analysis of the word "spanking" and suggested it might be related to slavery and insulting to African- Americans. He would not answer when asked directly if he was insulted.
Here his brain sounds fevered and diseased with hatred, but that racial syphilis that has afflicted his mind only worsens. He continues his assault filled with false religious righteousness.
Keyes, who has focused his campaign on abortion, said that his statement about whom Jesus would vote for was based on Obama’s pro-choice votes in the Illinois Senate.
"Christ would not stand idly by while an infant child in that situation died," Keyes said. "And I’m not the only person, obviously, who thinks if you are a representative of me, I cannot vote for you if you would ignore the dignity and claims of that child's life. So, yes, I did respond quite logically – you’ll see it’s quite logical, right – with the conclusion that Christ would not vote for Barack Obama, because Barack Obama has voted to behave in a way that it is inconceivable for Christ to have behaved."
Many of Keyes rants contain an authoritarian, theocratic rage which allows him to fit in with the far right of the Republican Party. I can’t imagine most black conservatives, who are mostly right-leaning centrists, would want to have anything to do with him. I can see Condoleezza Rice desperately running the other way when she spies him making his way to her at Black Republican conventions. I can see Colin Powell looking at his watch and searching for exits. I can envision Shelby Steele, Amy Holmes, JC Watts, et al, desperate to come up with conversation ending excuses, later denying they ever knew the man at all. He’s so repellent. He demagogues everyone with fervid apostolic damnation, yet kisses up profusely to the ones who reject him within his own party.
The fact that Keyes was the Republicans third, fourth or fifth choice to run against Obama, in spite of the fact that they would have preferred former Bears football coach Mike Ditka, who had no legislative experience to run instead of Keyes, shows how they truly feel about him. Keyes will do whatever bidding his party asks of him, but he gets very little in return other than some flowery talk about what an excellent speaker he is.
He receives adulating praise from individuals like Ann Coulter, who declare him the winner of every debate, yet are nowhere to be found when Keyes is crying out for funding, backing or recognition. She did not, after all, bail him out of jail in 1996 after that debate gate crashing. There was no hand holding or consolations. He is merely a tool in the party’s machine, a parlor trick, a clown. Look at the incredible Negro. He walks and talks so elegantly!
Yet what offices has he held other than ambassador? What elections has he won? Where was his party, his "friends" when he is shunted by the party brass? Keyes deserves the Republican Party who uses him like a foolish $10 hooker to agitate the masses. He deserves to covet a love he can never obtain.
Therefore the two final questions, this time, will be easy to answer:
Chances of endorsing Obama: None.
Chances of voting for Obama: None.
The man has resigned himself to his fate of perpetual ignorant underdog. I say we leave the scoundrel where he is and bury him in laughter as he chokes on his own villainous piety and grandiose ambitions.
Check back to The Black Snob all this week and next with the series concluding on April 14th.
Sunday: Amy Holmes
Monday: Condoleezza Rice
Tuesday: Ward Connerly
Wednesday: Shelby Steele
Thursday: Alan Keyes
Friday: JC Watts
Saturday: Colin Powell
Sunday: Armstrong Williams
Monday: Michael Steele
Tuesday: John McWhorter
Wednesday: LaShawn Barber and Herman Cain
Thursday: Star Parker and Eric Wallace
Friday: (NEW!) Larry Elder and Thomas Sowell
Saturday:(NEW!) Juan Williams
Sunday: A final analysis, "Who Would Clarence Thomas Vote For?"