CHICAGO, Sept. 2 (UPI) -- When Alan Keyes left his native Maryland to run for the U.S. Senate in Illinois a month ago, Democrats said all they had to do was sit back and let Keyes be Keyes.
Front-runner Barack Obama, who rose from obscurity to national prominence with his keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston in July, said voters in middle-of-the-road Illinois would reject Keyes's extreme right positions on abortion, homosexuality, taxes and affirmative action.
Who knew moderate Republicans would, too?
Early on the Keyes's campaign focused largely on opposition to abortion. Keyes, who holds a doctorate in government from Harvard, spoke passionately about morality and philosophy -- articulating broad ideas and themes rather than specific issues facing the state -- mostly because he didn't know that much about Illinois.
Party conservatives who brought him to the Land of Lincoln after moderates failed to find a replacement candidate for Jack Ryan during a quixotic six-week search said Keyes would clearly articulate conservatism and energize party faithful on Election Day.
Keyes's refusal to take advice from top state party leaders left some perplexed. He set off on his own. Keyes had run two unsuccessful campaigns for the GOP presidential nomination in 1996 and 2000 and two failed campaigns for U.S. Senate in Maryland.
He will add an unsuccessful Senate campaign in Illinois to his political resume in two months.
Staunch conservatives expressed dismay when Keyes, after receiving jeers from black spectators at a back-to-school parade on Chicago's South Side last month, proposed exempting descendants of African-American slaves from federal income taxes for "one or two generations."
Conservatives didn't buy into the radical reparations idea but said let Keyes be Keyes.
Keyes continued to alienate moderate Republicans when he called the vice president's lesbian daughter a "selfish hedonist" because her sexual preference promoted pleasure rather than procreation. The remarks came in an interview Monday with Sirius OutQ, a gay and lesbian satellite radio station. His comments would have gone largely unnoticed except OutQ released the interview and when reporters put Keyes in the position of defending his core beliefs against homosexuality he more than obliged.
"He made clear that it is selfish and hedonistic by definition," Bill Pascoe, Keyes's spokesman, told The Southern Illinoisan newspaper. "They came back and asked, 'Are you saying that the vice president's daughter is a selfish hedonist?' He then said, he did not know, because he has never asked her directly if she practices homosexuality."
Keyes said if she did, "Of course she is. That goes by definition."
Illinois Republican Chairman Judy Baar Topinka called Keyes's remarks "idiotic," but he did not back down in a speech Wednesday at an Illinois delegation breakfast.
"In a homosexual relationship, there is nothing implied except the self-fulfillment, contentment and satisfaction of the parties involved in the relationship," said Keyes. "That means it is a self-centered, self-fulfilling, selfish relationship that seeks to use the organs intended for procreation for purposes of pleasure. The word pleasure in Greek is hedone and we get the word hedonism from that word."
Keyes said the New York radio interviewer, not he, brought up Mary Cheney's name.
"The people asking me the question did so, and if that's inappropriate, blame the media. Don't blame me. If my own daughter were a homosexual or lesbian, I would love my daughter, but I would tell her she was in sin," he said.
Cheney's staff called Keyes original remark "inappropriate."
Elizabeth Cheney, Mary's sister, refused to discuss Keyes on CNN.
Keyes received applause when he was introduced by Phyllis Schlafly at a luncheon of anti-abortion-rights conservatives at Central Park's Tavern on the Green.
The Illinois Family Institute called Keyes comments a "breath of fresh air in an age desensitized to moral truths."
"We may not always agree with the way he says things and I think he could be more gracious, but Keyes's fearlessness in discussing issues is a refreshing change from cookie-cutter candidates who lack the courage or run from their liberal record every election year, said Peter LaBarbera, executive director of the Illinois Family Institute.
Other Republicans were less accepting.
"I think it's clear we lose Illinois," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
"I think it's an unfortunate thing," said former Gov. Jim Edgar, chairman of the Illinois Bush/Cheney '04 re-election campaign. "I think we should get back to the real issues in this campaign and that's national security and to some extent the economy for a U.S. Senate candidate. I just hope that we can get back on what we ought to be talking about."
Former four-term Republican Gov. James Thompson called Keyes's views "not only extreme but offensive."
State House Republican leader Tom Cross said he suspects voters will hear from Keyes for the next 60 days and then he'll probably leave Illinois.
State Sen. Dave Syverson, who pushed to put Keyes on the ballot, said he wished the comments had not been made. "Those were personal comments and better kept to himself," he told the Chicago Tribune.
The uproar left Republicans in man-on-the-street interviews saying Keyes should go home to Maryland now.
"You don't attack people's children. I can't stand behind that kind of an idiotic comment," said Topinka, who was in another room during Keyes's eight-minute speech. "You don't pick on people's kids. Kids are off limits." Topinka said she would not change her mind about stepping down as state party leader after the fall election.
"In a political career defined by failures, this is a new low for Alan Keyes," Patrick Guerriero, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay and lesbian group, said in a statement. "Attacking politicians' children is beyond the pale, even for an extremist like Alan Keyes."
During his strident defense of his position on homosexuality Keyes pointed out that a constitutional ban on gay marriage is part of the Republican Party platform.
Illinois bans same-sex marriage but allows homosexual couples to adopt children.
Keyes left New York before Thursday's acceptance speech by President George W. Bush. He spent much of his time at the quadrennial with friends and made daily appearances on national and international media.
Keyes raised eyebrows when he declined to address the national convention. Some groused when he attacked reporters, accusing Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass of being a tool of the Democratic Party, but even reporters said bashing the media is no sin.
But alienating party members is, especially if Keyes's candidacy energizes Democrats and prompts Republican moderates to cross over and secretly vote for Obama.
Political gaffes like these are just what the Rev. Jesse Jackson envisioned when he publicly called on the president to campaign with Keyes in Illinois.
University of Illinois political scientist Dick Simpson says Keyes could hurt the entire Republican ticket.
"He could cost seats in the Congress, from one to three of them. He could cost the Republicans a chance which they did have to regain one of the houses in the state legislature and he could make Republican politics much more difficult," Simpson told Chicago Public Radio.
Obama joked that reporters abandoned him to follow Keyes because he's better copy.
"I have strong disagreements with Vice President Cheney on a whole host of policy issues, but I respect the love he has for his daughter, and I think it's never appropriate to make the sort of comments that have been made," Obama told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Keyes is no loose cannon. State Republicans may be disappointed by the campaign so far, but they knew what they had when they chose him.
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