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..
