Constitution Party to Obama-Foe Keyes: No Thanks

Who would have thought that, when it comes to candidate recruitment, the tiny Constitution Party maintains higher standards than the Republican Party?

Alan Keyes, who last appeared on a November ballot as the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, wants to mount another race against the man who beat him in 2004: Barack Obama.

So Keyes presented himself as a prospective nominee for the Constitution Party, a small, extremely right-wing group with was founded in 1992 as the U.S. Taxpayers Party and that still operates under a variety of names at the state level. (Among its affiliated parties in the California remnant of the old American Independent Party that was spawned by former Alabama Governor George Wallace's 1968 presidential run, which carried five southern states.)

The Constitution Party 2004 presidential nominee, Michael Peroutka, secured 144,421 votes -- for 0.12 percent of the total. The party secured a significantly larger percentage of the vote -- 25.5 -- when it ran anti-immigration zealot Jim Gilchrist -- in a 2005 special election for an open U.S. House seat in California.

But it generally remains on the margins of political viability.

Keyes promised to change that by putting his relatively big name and considerable -- if sometimes bizarre -- oratorical skills in the party's service.

But the delegates to the party's convention rejected the former Reagan administration ambassador. Baptist preacher and Florida talk-radio host Chuck Baldwin, the party's 2004 vice presidential nominee, secured 383.8 delegate votes (74 percent) to 125.7 delegate votes (24 percent) for Keyes.

Here's an interesting notion: The Constitution Party -- which supports the repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment (the one that allows Congress to tax income) and the Seventeenth Amendment (the one that requires the direct election of U.S. Senators) and believes that states should be allowed to secede at will -- took a look at Alan Keyes and found him wanting as a candidate.

But the Republican Party was willing placed Keyes' name on the ballot in its race to retain a Senate seat from Illinois.

And which party are we supposed to take seriously?

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