Posts on Renew America

Now that Tommy Thompson, Duncan Hunter, Sam Brownback, Tom Tancredo, Jim Gilmore, and even Fred Thompson have all dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, it is good to see that there are some candidates who have no chance of winning but still refuse to let reality get in the way of their personal vanity and desire to seem relevant … and no, we are not talking about Ron Paul, but rather Alan Keyes.

You would be forgiven for not knowing that Keyes is even running, but indeed he is, even though he can’t get into the GOP debates, has no money, and nobody is counting his votes. But to his credit, Keyes remains undaunted by such obstacles and is currently positioning himself for a major breakthrough:

On Tuesday, presidential candidate Alan Keyes began a six-week grassroots tour of Texas, originally his home state. Keyes is a 1968 graduate of Cole High School in San Antonio.

Although Keyes will make excursions outside Texas as needed, and will continue his nationwide radio blitz to counter the media's virtual blackout of his campaign, he plans to camp out in Texas until its primary on March 4. As most pundits agree, if Super Tuesday fails to produce a "presumptive" Republican nominee, Texas becomes all the more important as the last big prize of the primaries.

For all intents and purposes, the headquarters of the Keyes campaign has moved to Texas.

“For all intents and purposes,” the Keyes campaign appears to be a sham, with the majority of its expenditures going to “contribution refunds” which dwarf the $10,000 that has gone to a consulting firm linked to Keyes’ Declaration Foundation and Renew America organizations.  

At this point, Keyes’ only hope of securing the GOP presidential nomination is if every major Republican politician in the nation gets embroiled in a sex scandal, reducing the party to desperately seeking a D-list nobody to serve as a sacrificial lamb – a position for which Keyes is perfectly qualified.

When Alan Keyes announced his latest quixotic campaign, someone might have thought he hit the ground running: He was featured just three days later at the Values Voter Debate alongside real, live presidential candidates. Granted, he may have benefited from the fact that the four Republican front runners all skipped that event, and in the end, he didn’t make too much of an impression, but none the less, it’s nice to be wanted. And he also scored a spot at Tavis Smiley’s black-oriented forum on PBS (although again, the four leading candidates skipped that debate).

But alas, “the Big Mo” would elude Keyes. He was left out of the GOP debate in Michigan; blaming NBC, Keyes called it a “sham.” (On the other hand, it did have those four candidates…) He was also left out of the next debate in Orlando. Worst of all, he wasn’t even invited to speak at the Family Research Council Values Voter Summit.

So at this point, it’s not too surprising that Keyes would be left out of last night’s CNN/YouTube Republican debate. Nevertheless, Keyes campaign chief Stephen Stone (who moonlights as a pro-Keyes editor of Keyes’s RenewAmerica website) is outraged. Stone, in a angry—and long-winded—e-mail exchange with CNN, threatens legal action and insinuates foul play:

How do CNN and YouTube intend to dispel the obvious appearance that their exclusion of Ambassador Keyes from the debate does in fact amount to an attempt to damage the Keyes campaign? In other words, explain why the behavior of CNN and YouTube is not intentionally self-fulfilling — since it presumes in advance that the Keyes campaign lacks viability, and then proceeds to ensure such lack of viability by excluding Dr. Keyes from the nation's consciousness — even though he is the most eloquent and persuasive Republican candidate in the race, a candidate who in 2000 was widely credited with winning the Republican presidential debates and came in third in the primaries, and whose candidacy, therefore, cannot objectively be considered less than viable.

In a move that comes as a surprise to absolutely nobody, Alan Keyes has decided that that nation needs him and so he has decided to throw his hat into the ring and seek the Republican Presidential nomination for a third time:

Alan Keyes filed a Statement of Candidacy (Form 2) with the Federal Election Commission--thus officially announcing as a Republican candidate for President of the United States.

Keyes told Janet Parshall, host of a nationally syndicated radio show, that he's "unmoved" by the lack of moral courage shown by the other candidates, among whom he sees no standout who articulates the "key kernel of truth that must, with courage, be presented to our people."

…

As a result, Keyes said, "We're putting together an effort that's not going to be like anything before, because it's going to be entirely based on citizen action. We're going to be challenging people to take a pledge for America's revival," and elevate them from spectators in the political arena to participants.

The idea that Keyes’ campaign is going to be “entirely based on citizen action” is pretty far-fetched considering that, last time we checked, the petition urging him to run had only garnered 1700 signatures over the course of three months.  Add to that the basic fact that Keyes was behind the entire “draft Alan Keyes” movement from the start and it becomes pretty clear that he is less concerned about the “lack of moral courage” of the other candidates than with his own search for the spotlight.  

But Keyes is in and will undoubtedly put on quite a show when he joins the various other second-tier candidates at tonight’s “Values Voter Presidential Debate,” where he will probably get a warm welcome, seeing as he was one of the founders of the very organization that is sponsoring it.  

It has now been three months since the launch of the Alan Keyes-backed “We Need Alan Keyes For President” movement and the organization’s petition urging him to run has garnered a mere 1700 signatures  - but that seems to be enough to convince Keyes that he is needed in the GOP primary:

Several Republican presidential hopefuls have committed to be in the Mountain State for the West Virginia Republican Presidential Convention.

A spokesman for the West Virginia GOP says 10 candidates have registered for their February convention.

Among those attending will be Sam Brownback, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, Alan Keyes, John McCain, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and Gene Zarwell.  

More interestingly, it appears as if Keyes might also be participating in the upcoming “Values Voter Presidential Debate” September 17th in Florida.  According to the latest press release: “Seven Republican candidates have confirmed their attendance, but hundreds of encouraging calls are being made to the few remaining unconfirmed candidates.”

Those “remaining unconfirmed candidates” just happen to be the top four Republican hopefuls, each one of which has declared that they won’t be attending:

The festivities, however, look likely to go off without a marquee name. Queried yesterday by The New York Sun, the McCain campaign cited a scheduling conflict. "We are not attending," a spokeswoman for Mr. McCain, Brooke Buchanan, replied by e-mail. "It's the last day of the No Surrender tour — we will be in South Carolina."

Likewise, the Romney campaign's Florida spokeswoman, Gail Gitcho, told the Sun that the former Massachusetts governor had "declined due to a scheduling conflict."

Mr. Thompson's press office also is citing "another event on his calendar that day."

The Giuliani camp didn't even bother with the scheduling-conflict ruse, providing the Sun with the text of a letter the former mayor's campaign manager, Michael DuHaime, sent to the debate's organizers on Friday. "Thank you for your kind invitation for Mayor Giuliani to attend a presidential debate hosted by Values Voters," Mr. DuHaime wrote. "Unfortunately Mayor Giuliani will be unable to accept your invitation."

A WorldNetDaily article announcing that WND’s own Joseph Farah will be moderating the event, lists only six confirmed participants: Duncan Hunter, Mike Huckabee, Tom Tancredo, Sam Brownback, Ron Paul and John Cox.  But since the Values Voter press release says that seven have agreed to participate, could Keyes be that final “candidate?” It is entirely possible, considering that an earlier version of the very same WorldNetDaily article listed Keyes as participating, as does the most recent Rick Scarborough Report.

Perhaps Keyes should hurry up and decide if he is indeed running because a presidential campaign would almost surely raise some concerns about his continuing participation in Vision America’s supposedly non-partisan “70 Weeks to Save America” Crusade, not to mention concerns about the fairness of the Values Voter debate considering that Keyes was one of the founders of the very organization that is sponsoring it..  

Draft Keyes leader says the comments of a few hundred supporters are "worth hundreds, if not thousands, of just nominal supporters" as organization gears up for Iowa straw poll: "The draft-Keyes movement says it does not yet have the budget to pay $15,000 for the right to have a tent at the straw poll, but is paying $1,000 for a table with no decorations inside the Iowa State Center and another outside the building. It also intends to distribute 11,000 flyers."

The Minuteman PAC, established to provide financial support to anti-immigrant candidates running for federal office, appears to be establishing a trend of not actually providing support to candidates. As we previously reported, in the first quarter of 2007 the Minuteman PAC raised over $300,000, and of the $270,000 spent, only $10,000 went toward a candidate running for office.

The organization recently released second quarter numbers and they are not much different. Having raised nearly $260,000 and disbursed close to $250,000, not one penny of that money went to any candidate, as the Minuteman PAC failed to make a single political contribution during the quarter. The vast majority of its expenses -- around $215,000 -- went to fundraising and direct mail fees, mainly to American Caging, American Mailing Services, and other firms linked to non-profit groups associated with Alan Keyes.

Since the unveiling of the Alan Keyes-backed “We Need Alan Keyes for President” movement back in early June, the effort hasn’t made much progress, with only 1100 or so people signing the petition urging him to run.  At this rate, it’ll take Keyes nearly 4700 years to generate enough support to match the 62 million votes President Bush garnered in 2004. 

But all hope is not lost for the Draft Alan Keyes movement, as they have a secret strategy to make a strong showing in the upcoming Iowa Straw Poll – not by winning it mind you, because Keyes can’t participate since he’s not a candidate.   

But they have a plan:

[The] straw poll [is] a unique opportunity to get literature into the hands of a large number of the state's voters, many of whom are already very supportive of the possibility of a Keyes candidacy (since Alan got 14 percent in the 2000 Iowa Caucus and is still remembered fondly by grassroots Iowans, we keep hearing from reliable sources).

To distribute literature, we're required to reserve a table — so we're lining one up in the best location still available. We'll use our table as a base of operations for our volunteers.

Thus, they are asking for volunteers and, more importantly, donations so they can print up fliers to hand out and maybe even t-shirts, all of which will “boost our national movement and possibly give Alan the kind of support he needs to announce his candidacy:” 

Besides funds for the Iowa Straw Poll, we need seed money to get our movement fully off the ground. All of us are volunteering our time and effort — but like any political movement or campaign, we have a significant list of things we'd like to utilize in order to be effective. This includes high-tech servers for our website; state-of-the-art computer programming; professional guidance with FEC rules compliance; improved press release capability; means for advertising, mailings, literature, and travel expenses; supplies of bumper stickers, T-shirts, DVD's, and other gear — and everything else normally used by a political movement or campaign.

Of course, as we noted last time, the donation page carries a disclaimer explaining that if Keyes decides not to run, all the money raised gets handed over to an organization deemed “consistent with the vision and Declarationist ideals of Alan Keyes” by the organizers of the effort – both of whom happen to work for Keyes’ own RenewAmerica organization. 

All in all, a very novel fundraising scheme. 

But that it not to say there is nothing in it for those who agree to volunteer at the Iowa Straw Poll:

The GOP candidates will have tents for giving out free food, so there should be plenty to eat.

When the anti-immigrant Minutemen emerged onto the national scene, Washington Times reporter Jerry Seper wrote glowing profiles of the border vigilantes, but over the past year, relations have soured as Seper investigated allegations of shady finances from within the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. In Seper’s reports, one mysterious factor has been the numerous ways MCDC is intertwined with a host of non-profit and for-profit organizations associated with Alan Keyes. While Chris Simcox, head of MCDC, responded once last year with some unconvincing filings, the groups and leaders implicated have remained silent.

Now, one Keyes group is responding. Although only briefly mentioned in the Times, RenewAmerica – a web site featuring writing by Keyes and like-minded commentators – calls a recent article “an obvious (and unprovoked) effort to discredit the organization.” In the article, Seper examines the FEC filings of the Minuteman PAC and discovers that 97 percent of the money it spent went to “operating expenses,” including many payments to for-profit consulting and fundraising companies associated with Keyes. These filings – as well as filings for a second Minuteman PAC – are publicly available.

In listing some of these PAC expenditures, Seper mentions RenewAmerica in passing:

Politechs Inc., a Los Angeles-based political consulting firm headed by Mary Parker Lewis, a key adviser to MCDC and a top official in several tax-exempt fundraising organizations led or founded by Mr. Keyes. In the report, the Minuteman PAC said it paid $10,000 for fundraising to Politechs. Mrs. Lewis served as chief of staff for Mr. Keyes' 1996 and 2000 presidential runs and in his 2004 senatorial race against Barack Obama in Illinois. She also is executive director of Declaration Foundation and chief of staff at Renew America, another tax-exempt fundraising group founded by Mr. Keyes.

According to RenewAmerica counsel Steven Voigt, “Ms. Lewis--a longtime colleague of Alan Keyes--is in fact Keyes' Chief of Staff, not RenewAmerica's. She's not an officer of RenewAmerica.”

What’s more interesting, though, is Voigt’s angry denial that RenewAmerica is even a non-profit at all. “RenewAmerica is not tax-exempt,” he writes. This may come as a surprise to those who have donated to the company. In the fine print, the group says that “to avoid federal government intrusion, your donation to RenewAmerica.us is NOT tax deductible.” Registered non-profits, which don’t pay taxes, are required to report publicly their revenue, their expenditures, and the salaries of the top officials.

Voigt parlays this mention of RenewAmerica – as a biographical detail of Keyes associate Mary Lewis – into a broadside against Seper’s “bad journalism,” and adds suggestively, “I am left to wonder whether the rest of his article is equally unreliable.” But since the Keyes groups actually implicated in this article on the Minutemen’s suspicious finances have yet to respond (perhaps preoccupied with drafting Keyes to run for president), and Voigt is unwilling to look into it (“I am not counsel to any of the other organizations mentioned in that article, so I don't know”), Voigt’s editorial raises more questions than it settles.

Try and follow this if you can:

An organization calling itself "We Need Alan Keyes for President" has launched a website to press the former Reagan administration diplomat to enter the field of Republican presidential contenders.

According to a statement at the website -- AlanKeyes.com -- the organization's purpose is to "determine and rally support for a presidential candidacy by Dr. Keyes."

The statement adds, "We Need Alan Keyes for President, Inc., is a political action committee . . . not managed by Alan Keyes."

The effort is spearheaded by several individuals at RenewAmerica, a grassroots organization affiliated with Keyes.

Stephen Stone, president of RenewAmerica, said, "At this point, Alan has not indicated that he will run.  In fact, he has said that he would run only if enough people at the grassroots come forward to say they want him to run.  Our job is to give them a chance to do so."

Added RenewAmerica's legal counsel Steven Voigt, chief of staff to the draft Keyes movement:  "Alan believes that the American people, themselves, are the key to restoring the values that are essential to the future of our nation.  He has therefore stressed that it's ultimately up to grassroots Americans to decide who they want in the arena.  If enough moral conservatives want him, he's indicated he will run."

So the president and legal counsel of RenewAmerica - an organization that just so happens to have Alan Keyes as its chairman - have spontaneously decided to launch a draft Alan Keyes movement? 

Keyes has apparently told Stone and Voigt that he’ll only run if “enough people at the grassroots come forward to say they want him to run” and so they have set out to generate such support via the website AlanKeyes.com – a website that just so happens to be registered to Alan Keyes Enterprises:

            Registrant:       

            Alan Keyes Enterprises, Inc

            ATTN: ALANKEYES.COM

            c/o Network Solutions

            P.O. Box 447

            Herndon, VA 20172-0447

AlanKeyes.com was initially the site for his radio show. It then became a site for his 2000 presidential bid, and then went on to become a redirect to the RenewAmerica site, before becoming Alan Keyes Weblog, and then evolving into We Need Alan Keyes for President.

It should also be noted that the bio of Keyes on the draft Keyes website is nearly word-for-word identical to the bio of Keyes that is posted on the RenewAmerica website.  And those inclined to donate to this new effort should probably be aware that their money will, in all likelihood, end up in Keyes' hands one way or another:

Your donation will be used by We Need Alan Keyes for President, Inc., to advance a potential candidacy by Alan Keyes for President of the United States. If Alan does enter the race, your donation will thereafter be used to advance his campaign. Should Alan decide not to enter the race, your donation will be used to support one or more organizations that are consistent with the vision and Declarationist ideals of Alan Keyes, as selected by the principals of We Need Alan Keyes for President, Inc. By donating, you understand and consent to the use of your contribution for such an alternative purpose, should Alan choose not to enter the race.

Considering that the two principle figures in We Need Alan Keyes for President are both employed by Keyes’ RenewAmerica, it doesn’t require much imagination to figure out just what organization “consistent with the vision and Declarationist ideals of Alan Keyes” they plan on funneling the donations to, should Keyes not run.

Since We Need Alan Keyes for President is not in any way being “managed by Alan Keyes,” it sure was generous of Keyes to allow the president and legal counsel of his organization to take time out of their schedules to try and gin up support for his own presidential campaign.  And it was even more generous of him to hand over his website to help them in their effort.  

To “enlist 100,000 Values Voters, 10,000 key leaders, 5,000 Patriot Pastors and 5,000 women.” Meanwhile: Busy Scarborough in Texas on the “biblical role” of judges, and back in Missouri for stem cell research.

Truth Wins Out is calling attention to an interview given by Guy Adams on an Internet radio show. Adams, who is the deputy national grassroots director for Alan Keyes’ Renew America, asserts that the latest “trend” among gays is “sex with infants.” You can listen to the show here [link broken--see below].

Keyes himself is no stranger to wild anti-gay rhetoric. In 2004, when Keyes was the Republican candidate for Senate in Illinois—and when Guy Adams served as his bodyguard—he claimed that incest is “inevitable” for children of gays and called Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter a “selfish hedonist.”

UPDATE: The link to the radio show's web site has been removed. You can listen to the program here.