TPM endorses Alan Keyes in Illinois (almost)... [+ vital links included]

TPM's Josh Marshall thinks that Illinois Republicans ought to nominate Marylander Alan Keyes to run for Senate rather than Andrea Grubb Barthwell, because Keyes is that loveable kind of crazy rather than Barthwell, who's that mean kind of crazy.


Look, whoever they nominate is gonna lose anyway, and doing so in a classy manner is certainly the better choice. But Keyes, despite being, as this website proves, the "Quintessential American" (minus the modesty, of course), I think there's a simple reason why Keyes is loveable-crazy rather than having a filled with anecdotes about what an a-hole he is.

He's a Republican who's never held power. He's good at talking morals and public morality and the natural law when he has no responsibility for putting such ethics into public policy. Give him a real title (other than "last year's Pat Buchanan") and he'd perform to the same expectations as any other ideological conservative.

If your thinking is that messed up, you're gonna turn into a creep the second you have the power to try and force the real world to conform to your twisted moral worldview. And that's true no matter how cool you once looked stage diving into a mosh pit.