The Keyes juggernaut cometh

Look out, folks, Alan Keyes (who, you'll remember, famously garnered Michael Moore's endorsement moshing to Rage Against the Machine) is looking to ride a grassroots groundswell to the GOP nomination! From an e-mail sent out by Helen Valois for Renew America, detailing their petition efforts at the Iowa Straw Poll to draft Keyes:

"But, Helen," said another friend — who was being regaled with tales of our trip and shown photos of all of us at the booth smiling for the camera and saying "Keyes!" — "tell me the truth. I believe in everything Alan stands for and all of that, but do you really think he has a chance?"

That word "chance" is becoming eerily reminiscent of another word all too unthinkingly and ubiquitously employed these days — the word "choice." Nobody seems to stop and ask, in the context of presidential or other politics, "a chance of what?"

A chance of selling out everything important, all for the sake of manipulating someone's way into office?

A chance of becoming as wise as doves and as innocent as serpents?

Do you have any idea what Helen's talking about here? "Wise as doves?" "Innocent as serpents?" I know the wingers are prone to talking in code, but this doesn't make any sense.

Oh, and I believe the correct response to the question, "Helen, do you really think Keyes has a chance?" is "Dear god no."

A chance of forfeiting the incomparable legacy of liberty bequeathed to us through bloodshed and sacrifice, all because we can't be bothered to look up from the froth of our raspberry lattes long enough to take stock of what is providentially required of this generation of Americans, right now?

Wait a minute... raspberry lattés? I thought lattés where the purview of the Volvo-driving liberal crowd. Did they somehow know of my leftist proclivities when I signed up to receive their newsletters for a larf? Weird.

Why not ask the black man who told me he is sick and tired of hearing that the country "isn't ready" for an African American president?

"When's the last time you heard any such opinion expressed about a certain Barack Obama?" I pointed out. This guy didn't start laughing, however. He spent the next ten minutes earnestly fleshing out my own thought for me, in quite a number of worthwhile ways.

I hope one of the ways he fleshed out Helen's thoughts for her was by pointing out that the last time Alan Keyes carpetbagged his way into a mano-a-mano electoral scrum with Obama, he got pasted.

They stood in line for their turn to wield the pen, with signatures totaling two hundred in one day.

There you have it. 200 sigs in one day. Keyes is gonna roll!