Alan Keyes joins the GOP fray

"Have campaign, will run."

Clearly, that's Alan Keyes' mantra.

Keyes -- whose pull-no-punches, give-no-quarter conservatism livened up the 1996 and 2000 Republican primary presidential campaigns -- is at it again.  He's entered the 2008 GOP race (you can read all about it at his website here) and is to participate tonight in a "Values Voter" forum in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

That forum already promised a lively discussion of issues near and dear to social conservatives.  A recent release promoting it said questions would come "not only from national pro-family leaders" but from "an abortion survivor, victims of the homosexual agenda, parents whose children were once frozen embryos and a former slave in Sudan!"

Although invitations went out to all presidential candidates, no Democrats accepted (no surprise there). Nor did any of the major GOP contenders.  But Keyes will join several other Republicans running for the White House on a wing and a prayer: Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, Ron Paul and Tom Tancredo.

Keyes announced his candidacy Friday during an interview with religious radio broadcaster Janet Parshall.  He acknowledged that he took the step with some reluctance.  He told Parshall's listeners: "You all know I've been out on the hustings a number of times and been pretty well beaten up.  It has an effect on you ... and it did on me, to be sure."

But he said "the more I thought about it and prayed over it, the more it seemed to me that the one thing I've always been called to do is just raise the standard -- not to worry about anything else, but to make sure that, clearly articulated, there is the sense of this national standard of our allegiance to God and His authority that has been the foundation stone of our nation's life."

Sounds like he's still in fighting form.

Along with his third presidential bid, Keyes has run for the Senate three times -- twice in Maryland (1988 and 1992) and once in Illinois (2004).  In the latter race, he got swamped by a fellow named Barack Obama.

Keyes' decision to hit the campaign trail brings to mind the patron saint of perennial candidates, Republican Harold Stassen.  Keyes, 57, is going to have to stay in good shape to approach the standard set by that legend -- Stassen, who lived to be 93, ran for president nine times.

-- Don Frederick

Comments

[Tannim]

Keyes is a simple plant, in both the figurative and literal sense. He is there for one reason only, which is to try to upstage Dr. Paul at the debates where the good doctor keeps skunking the rest of the field. This is a desperate ploy by the GOP leadership, although they would deny it, to keep their own jobs by keeping Dr. Paul's momentum checked and keep him from the nomination. If he wins, they're out, and they know it. It also is an attmept to placate the growing number of disillusioned Religious Right GOP members who find the GOP field not to their liking. It will not work. Keyes, whether he pays himself a salary again or not, is a fringe shill who is unelectable. His reputation as a carpetbagger is still there and is coming into play here again. He is also completely out of touch with Main Street USA and our values. Expect him to split the RR vote (what little is left) with Brownback and then for both of them to drop out.

[Tapsearch Tapart News Editor]

We welcome Alan Keyes into the presidential fray. However, he must add the sanctity of life to the workday too. Keyes or any Republican must respond to the unfair trade agreements like NAFTA and GATT with a resounding NO! Globalization using Free Trade as its tool has stolen workers' dignity not only in the USA but across the globe. It is not based on trading products but it is primairly involves the of moving production and factories from place to place anywhere in the world for the sake of cheaper labor down to the lowest levels of wage slave and even child labor. The real commodities are workers who are put on a world trading block to compete with one another in a global arena like gladiators.

Adam Smith held labor as the core of societies and held labor as something sacred. Free Traders use him to defend their actions but do relate to Adam Smith's stands on human dignity in the workday.

Globalization and Free Trade have also made our tax codes obsolete with tariffs taken off products and put on workers. In addition, the money we now spend at retail quickly fans out to the places where the products are made. In the de-industrialization of the USA, this means is shoots off to some distant land and does not stay here to grow our local value added economies.

See Taps instead of Taxes at http://ezinearticles.com/?id=418231 or http://tapsearch.com/realtaxreform

Between the beginning of life and the end of it - there is the workday. Globalization and Free Trade have made a mockery of of the Free Enterpise system. It is supposed to make it easier for all to be good.
( Tapsearcher is now moderator at http://www.bizarrepolitics.com/

[Ray Tapajna]

Tapart News and Art that Talks editor and artist encourages Alan Keyes to run or closely support a presidential candidate of the Constitution Party and suggests calling the members the Constitution Populists or " CPs" .
Besides the right to life issue the main problem is the workday. Workers have no voice in the process of globalization and free trade even though they are the core of society. Workers have been "commoditized".

The Clintons and the Bush family have followed a course which has degraded human dignity in the workday with both creating a working poor class in the USA and impoverished working classes abroad. The American Dream has been put aside in a forced march to globalization. We have a new "ism" without an portfolio with Globalism.

Perhaps, someone like Alan Keyes can question how this happened and who said we had to compete like this in a global economic arena like gladiators. We can start with the year 1956 as noted below in a published letter about Hillary Clinton's spins on NAFTA and free trade.

Hillary Clinton's convenient turnabout on NAFTA and free trade
Friday, March 07, 2008
Cleveland Plain Dealer Letters Editorial Page

Voters are shopping their jobs away at places like Wal-Mart and now are vot ing their jobs away by supporting Hillary Clinton. Here is the real timeline behind free trade:

1956 - U.S. government starts moving factories outside the United States.

1970 - 120 factories moved from the United States to Mexico.

1980 - 400 maquiladora factories in Mexico.

1980s - While Hillary Clinton was on the Board of Directors of Wal-Mart, about 1,000 U.S. factories were moved to Mexico.

1992 - 2,000 maquiladora factories in Mexico.

1994 - NAFTA is passed by a Democrat-controlled Congress and signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton; number of factories moved to Mexico doubles to more than 4,000; reports tell of "dirty manufacturing" in Mexico causing health problems and birth defects.

1995 - President Clinton rushes $20 billion to save the Mexican economy. Then he uses other means to rush even more money to Mexico. ( President asked Congress for $40 billion but they gave him just $20 billion instead- he said he would use other means to get the extra money to bail out the Mexican peso )

1996 - Hillary says NAFTA is good for everyone.

2000 - Hillary, at an economic forum in Switzerland, praises business efforts in supporting NAFTA.

None of the above stopped the flood of Mexican workers to the United States seeking economic survival.

Now, after all of that, Hillary says free trade has to be tweaked at bit.

( See what ten Mexican Bishops say about NAFTA and free trade in their signed plea to stop it at http://www.bizarrepolitics.com/nafta-cultural-death and Central American Bishop reporting to the US Congress at http://tapearch.com/globalization )