Keyes To The Senate!
By Hans Zeiger (08/09/04)
Last week, the Democrats thought Barack Obama was invincible. Obama “seems unstoppable,” observed a Midwest political writer. But competition changes things. Enter the only statesman more eloquent than Obama, and the State Senator from Chicago’s South Side suddenly becomes stoppable. Republican sources say that Alan Keyes is set to enter the Illinois race for U.S. Senate on Sunday.
Beginning the moment Keyes announces, the Illinois Senate race will be the second most important political contest of the year after the presidential race. It will be the competition between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas all over again. Barack Obama is Steven Douglas, and Alan Keyes is Abraham Lincoln. In either case, the battleground is Illinois, the destination is the U.S. Senate, and the issue is the moral conscience of the nation. Then, it was a debate over slavery. Today, it is a debate over life, freedom, and the political survival of American character.
For Keyes, winning will not be everything; contrast is what’s important. In 1858, Douglas won reelection to his seat in the U.S. Senate; Lincoln won the debates and the hearts and minds of America’s freedom loving people. In this year, as in 1858, both men could be said to be future presidential contenders, but the destiny of America and the future occupant of the Oval Office hinges more, in these cases, on the ideas articulated than the immediate political victory.
With Alan Keyes in the ring, Obama will have no choice but to debate ideas. Alan Keyes will not allow his opponent to talk like a moderate and walk like a socialist.
Contrary to Barack Obama’s centrist portrayal at the equally and misleadingly centrist Democratic National Convention, he is a Leftist. Obama is so liberal that he, John Kerry, and John Edwards would have to compare the physical dynamics of their bleeding hearts to see who was more liberal. Obama opposes war in Iraq, opposes the Second Amendment with an “F” from the National Rifle Association, and receives perfect record scores from radical environmental groups and liberal social issue groups.
Obama is completely, unabashedly, enthusiastically pro-death. Planned Parenthood gives him a 100 voting record score while National Right to Life Federation gives him zero. Obama even voted to continue the heinous and indefensible practice of partial birth murder.
Barack Obama supports homosexual “marriage,” and he sponsored an amendment to the Illinois statewide non-discrimination code to include special benefit status for people of alternative sexual orientations.
Despite that, Obama speaks to the middle, a great political skill. But statesmanship does not necessarily ask a candidate to speak as a centrist; it asks him to be right.
So no political wuss-mechanic can possibly script Ambassador Keyes to talk like a moderate. He is a man who knows the truth, speaks it with the utmost of energy and word economy, and unlike Barack Obama, thoroughly understands and defends the Founding principles of the United States.
With more power than any other candidate anywhere this year, Keyes will defend human life, marriage, and the constitution. He will call for changing the tax code, shrinking the size of government, combating judicial tyrants, winning the war on terror, and returning to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.
Keyes is uniquely qualified to serve in the U.S. Senate. He served as a State Department official during the Reagan Administration, a United Nations ambassador, a college president, head of several activist groups, radio talk show host of “America’s Wakeup Call,” host of the MSNBC program “Alan Keyes is Making Sense,” author, professional orator, and two-time presidential candidate.
I count Alan Keyes among my personal heroes. He first ran for president in 1996. As a Fifth Grader, I wrote my first letter to the editor of a local newspaper asking voters to consider Keyes in the Washington State presidential primary. My school binder was plastered with a large “Keyes ‘96” bumper sticker featuring a set of keys. For an assigned classroom persuasive speech that year, I chose to speak on why my classmates should support Alan Keyes’ race for the White House. I suppose my friends were correct in thinking I was crazy.
Lincoln himself was not successful at all he tried. Nor has Keyes been victorious in presidential races. When I was heading up Washington Students for Keyes in 2000, the “I think Alan Keyes is the best candidate, but…” comment I’d heard would often end with “He needs to serve in the U.S. Senate first.”
Well, this is our opportunity. Whether the voters of Illinois elect Alan Keyes to the Senate or not, this race has the makings of the greatest debate, perhaps since Lincoln and Douglas stood on podia across Illinois 146 years ago.
As Lincoln asked then, “What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.”
Against that destruction of spirit, we must support this new champion of liberty in the Land of Lincoln.
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