A big "Thank You" to Illinois Republican leaders

It was hard to believe but there he was, sweating profusely, eyes bulging, a man whose unpleasantness I thought I would never have to encounter again after the 2000 Republican primaries where his presence served to make his fellow candidates look like raving moderates -- and that's hard to do.

Yes, it was Alan Keyes, he of the santimonious wing of the "Creestyin" fundamentalist faction of the extreme right wing of the Republican party. A man whose views and rhetoric have never been moderated by the possibility of winning an election. A man who will now be allowed to blather publicly throughout the state of Illinois because of the breathtaking incompetence of the state Republican party.

If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would think that so-called moderate Illinois Republican leaders are getting kickbacks from the well-financed Obama campaign to help put him in office. After all, Obama is such an attractive candidate that the state GOP could be forgiven for trying to bask in his glow. They should have simply given Obama the GOP nomination so he could be elected by acclaimation!

So here is the whole ridiculous chain of events:

First, "state Republican leaders" were highly insulted to find out that the candidate actually selected in the Republican primary by the voters, Jack Ryan, had lied to them by telling them before the primary that there was nothing juicy in his sealed divorce papers.

So, that was a lie. But big deal, the guy wanted to act like an international playboy while he was married to "TV actress" Jeri Ryan, and she brought it up in the divorce proceedings. So you are a "state Republican leader" and you're pissed that he didn't give you the whole juicy story before the primary so you could determine whether it would play in Peoria.

So what do you do? You and your colleagues throw a collective hissy fit and jettison the guy from the race before you have any idea who would replace him on the ticket? In so doing, you elevate Obama to "shoo-in" status, thereby helping him get selected as the Keynote speaker of the Democratic National Convention, which elevates him to "superstar" status, thereby absolutely guaranteeing that no one -- repeat, no one -- will take your worthless nomination for the Senate.

So in your secret College of Cardinals selection process, you cede the nomination to the right-wing extremists of the party who haven't been able to win a Republican primary, much less a statewide race, because they decided to go out of state to shake the bushes for someone who would actually take a worthless nomination. And in a nation of nearly 300 million people, there was bound to be someone who would actually take the thing.

Enter Alan Keyes. A career speechifier who operates at the extremist margin of conservative circles only because of the color of his skin. He'll use the publicity generated from the campaign to re-energize his modest fund-raising base, which is what earns him his livelihood. He is not campaigning FOR the job; the campaign IS his job -- the job of publicizing Alan Keyes.

As for the race itself, if the Republicans had wanted to select a candidate that would turn the liberal-leaning Obama into a flaming moderate, thereby further burnishing his image as a national figure, there is no better choice than Alan Keyes.