Allow me to confess up front. I am a social conservative and if you matched my answers on a survey questionaire with those of Alan Keyes they would probably match up pretty well. I should also say I have met Alan Keyes. About 10 years ago I was in a local chapter of the organization he was then heading called Citizens Against Government Waste. He came out to have breakfast with about 5 of us. Whenever people ask if I have head him give a speech I say yes in good conscience. Having breakfast with Alan Keyes and listening to him give a speech in front of a few hundred people is more or less the same thing. Actually the meal option is better. It gives you something to do in between being paused into voicing your approval.
I can't stand the guy and it mystifies me how anyone else can. There is so much that is disagreeable about the whole specticle but the thing which bothers me most is how everyone is always going on about what a great debater he is. I couldn't disagree more. He is the worst kind of debater. Every question gets the same answer. Ask him anything and no matter the question and the answer will take the for of "Well, I think [insert some standard republican position], but the real quesion is how are we going to restore God and the Family to their proper place American life [continue on theme until moderator forces you to stop]. Moreover, he as this terrible habit of impuning everyone's motives. Anyone who thinks that there is question for which the answer is not restoring traditional values to their proper place in American life is purposefully dodging the issue and is part of the dark force that is leading America into Godlessness.
Or, they are racists. I find it odd that so few people comment on how often he uses the race card. Everything that does not go his way is due to racism, everyone that denies him something he thinks he is entitle to is a racist. You can get through an entire evening of Al Sharpton without him ever claiming to be a victim, but Keyes does it all the time.
When he is asked about being a carpet bagger and fed back some of his own quotes on Hillary Clinton I don't even have to hear his answer, it plays itself in my head, "Well, certainly I agree that it would be better if candidates come from the states they are running to represent, but I think the real question is [insert family, God...] and I think that those who raise the carpet bagger question are really trying to distract the American people from the real issue of [insert more family/God boilerplate]. "And I find it interesting that these same people who are raising the carpet bagger issue now were silent when a white woman ran for Senate in a state where she had never resided." Let that last made up quote stand as a bet (assuming anyone reads this blog). I wager that Keyes will play the race card on the carpet bagger question. Not the perfectly sensible and perfectly true partisan hypocracy card but no, the race card.
It always follows the same pattern, trifling concession, ...but the real question is...[family/God boilerplate]. Aside from the small amount of creativity he employs to bounce off of the question he is asked into the subject he always wants to talk about his answers are almost entirely interchangable from one question to the next. But what makes it unbearable is the way people go on about what a great speaker he is.
Oh yes, and one last thing, the pomposity. It is unbearable. (again I speak as a pompus religious conservative myself). There was once like a 3 second period where I almsot found myself liking Alan Keyes. It was news clip during the Republican primaries where he suddenly, at the encouragement of a large crowd at a rock concernt, decided to fall backwards off the stage and be passed through a mashe pit.
In the republican primary debates the next night Gary Bauer, who was fighting it out with Keyes for 5th place, accused him of conduct unbecoming of a conservative by allowing himself to be so circulated. Of course Keyes could have said, yeah but it was fun but no, he did it for a higher purpose. He did it to show that "Conservatives trust people, trust people to do the right thing, which is why we are willing to downsize the government and return to the people that those in Washington who have driven God out of the family and the family out of our children's lives the power to make decisions in their own lives, and by trusting in the people in that mashe pit...."
I think that is when my dislike for Alan Keyes crossed the line into an unhealthy obsessive hatred.
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