CHICAGO, Aug. 19 (UPI) -- Some conservative Republicans want to see the videotape.
They can't believe Alan Keyes, the ultra-conservative Republican from Maryland running for U.S. Senate in Illinois, spoke in favor of reparations and affirmative action for descendants of African-American slaves.
Is Keyes, embroiled in an under-financed 11-week campaign in a state where he has lived for two weeks, reacting to the pressure? Is there something strange in the water? Could his recent comments be the result of his stark change of residence from a three-acre estate in Maryland to a second-floor apartment in a brick two-flat on Garfield Street in Calumet City, Ill., near the Indiana state line?
So far Keyes has visited the local grocery store but has been too busy to explore the neighborhood.
Keyes was brought to Illinois by the state Republican Party to fight the good fight, to stand up for principle against liberal Democrat Barack Obama on issues like abortion, affirmative action and taxation.
So why did Keyes explain his position on slavery reparations at least four times this week? Monday he told the editorial board of the Chicago Defender, the nation's only black-owned daily newspaper, an argument could be made for slavery reparations -- a concept he adamantly opposed on his conservative radio show and MSNBC cable talk show "Alan Keyes Is Making Sense." The show ended in 2002.
"I think a cogent argument could be made for reparations in principle," Keyes told the Defender. "I think you would certainly have to say that people were deprived of not only their liberty. What we forget is that enslaved black Americans for instance were deprived of any opportunity to build wealth the way people would ordinarily build wealth from their neighbor."
Keyes did not propose cutting government checks for blacks like Social Security, but he shocked some backers by suggesting descendants of African-American slaves be exempted from federal income taxes "for a generation or two generations."
Descendants of slaves would keep paying Social Security.
Keyes also has advocated replacing the federal income tax with a national sales or consumption tax and repealing the 17th Amendment to allow state lawmakers to chose senators. Americans didn't elect senators by popular vote until 1913.
Is this the same Keyes who once called reparations "an insult to our slave ancestors"?
Keyes also told the Defender that affirmative-action programs should be limited to blacks only and that all others should have to prove they have been oppressed in the United States to qualify for remediation.
"I don't want to get into a victim competition here, but I think it would be kind of hard to suggest, in the American context, that some other group had been subjected to the same cauldron" as African-Americans," he said.
American Indians, who were nearly exterminated at the end of the 19th century, come to mind, but there aren't that many native Indian voters.
Keyes said while he opposes quotas, President Richard Nixon was fair and just when he initially established affirmative action in 1968. "You must take steps to make sure that opportunity is available to people who have been deprived by injustice, by the history of injustice, by slavery, racism, segregation."
Was Keyes pandering to the state's black residents after being jeered and booed at Saturday's annual Bud Billiken Day Parade up Martin Luther King Drive in the heart of Chicago's South Side black community?
Keyes seemed genuinely disturbed by his reception in the 'hood.
"Take your --- back to Maryland," yelled one spectator. Keyes asked the man why he was so hateful.
Obama was surrounded by hundreds of cheering supporters waving a sea of blue-and-white "Obama for Senate" signs and greeted like a prodigal son.
Keyes later clarified his position on reparations in a statement saying he opposes any effort to extort money damages from the U.S. government for past discrimination and segregation.
"The idea I have often put forward to address this challenge involves a traditionally Republican, conservative and market-oriented approach," he wrote. He said his plan to exempt slave descendants from taxes would "encourage business ownership, create jobs and support the development of strong economic foundations for working families."
"Generations of slaves were effectively taxed at 100 percent," he said.
Conservative newspaper columnist Jack Roeser, a wealthy Republican businessman, called Keyes' philosophical position on reparations "disturbing" but said he will support the Keyes campaign after a long, intense argument with Keyes Thursday before he spoke to the City Club of Chicago.
"If you think that because I wear a conservative label, I have forgotten that history and am not mindful of that injustice -- then I will tell you now that you are wrong," Keyes said.
Keyes is trying to turn his outsider status into a benefit.
He accused Obama, a state senator since 1996, of seeking control of Illinois' politically corrupt system -- not trying to reform it. As a new resident, Keyes said he has no ties to local public corruption.
"One of the problems in this state is this whole political machinery, in which bosses and their little cronies act in the interests of their little cliques," Keyes said.
The only problem is the worst political corruption scandal in the state in the last 20 years resulted in a federal racketeering and mail-fraud indictment of former Republican Gov. George Ryan last December. Ryan was accused of a scheme to sell commercial truckers' licenses for bribes when he was Illinois secretary of state.
"The more Alan Keyes talks, the less sense he seems to make," Obama campaign communications director Robert Gibbs told the Chicago Sun-Times. "Anyone who has spent any time in Illinois knows that the hallmark of Barack Obama's career is his political independence. This must be why Keyes' cable show got canceled."
Keyes held a joint news conference with Libertarian Senate candidate Jerry Kohn and independent Senate candidate Albert Franzen to call for four-way debates with Obama.
He has met Obama face-to-face once on the campaign trail since replacing Jack Ryan as the GOP Senate nominee. Ryan withdrew from the race because of sex-club allegations in unsealed custody documents from his divorce from television actress Jeri Ryan.
The two African-Americans traded barbs during a brief meeting at the India Independence Day Parade. Obama has agreed to three debates with Keyes.
Keyes said initially he and his wife laughed when he was approached by conservative Illinois Republicans to run for the open seat of retiring Sen. Peter Fitzgerald. But he said he felt God was challenging him to "put up or shut up" on his views, especially his opposition to abortion.
Obama supports a woman's right to abortion.
"Black babies are being slaughtered, and Obama doesn't think its an issue," Keyes told the Defender. He suggested abortion might be one reason why Hispanics had passed blacks as the nation's largest minority group.
Keyes opposes gay marriage and would support a constitutional amendment banning abortion, even in the case of rape or incest, if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe vs. Wade. He took his campaign to the state capital Thursday for Republican Day at the Illinois State Fair.
Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan welcomed Keyes to Springfield. "Every time he opens his mouth, he says something that prompts voters to become Democrats," Madigan said.
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