Alan Keyes is the Republican candidate for Senate in Illinois; Tom Coburn is the Republican candidate for Senate in Oklahoma. They’re both far-right conservatives running for the same office at the same time.
The difference in the way the two are being treated, however, is dramatic. Keyes is a “roll your eyes” candidate — ignored by the GOP establishment, shunned by the NRSC, mocked by pundits, and so disregarded by the White House that Bush aides won’t even mention his name out loud in public. Coburn, meanwhile, is embraced as a man the Republican establishment desperately wants in the Senate, and who also enjoys the enthusiastic support of the White House and the party’s campaign apparatus.
Given this, you might assume one is a fringe candidate while the other is mainstream. Let’s test this notion a bit — I’ll list some nutty remarks, you figure our which candidate said them. If one of the candidates is clearly out of his mind while the other deserves a place in the world’s most deliberative body, this should be pretty easy, right?
1. One candidate, upon earning his GOP Senate nomination, announced, “The victory is for God.”
2. One candidate condemned NBC for airing “Schindler’s List” on broadcast television, calling the move “an all-time low.” He added, “I cringe when I realize that there were children all across this nation watching this program.”
3. One candidate said a Republican senator who admitted to listening to Nine Inch Nails was “aiding and abetting cultural murder.”
4. One candidate likened his opponent to a “terrorist” because of his positions on abortion.
5. One candidate called his race against his opponent as a battle between “good and evil.”
6. One candidate he believes gays have “infiltrated the very centers of power in every area across this country” and represent “the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today.”
7. One candidate said that Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter is participating in “selfish hedonism” because she is a lesbian.
8. One candidate infuriated American Indians this month by saying, “The problem is, most of them aren’t Indians. The average Cherokee quantum is 1/512. Alright, most people in this room have more Cherokee in them than the Cherokee.”
9. One candidate mysteriously described political corruption this way: “It’s sort of like you’re sitting in a room and off in a corner of the room is a deeply smelly toad that is filling the room with a nasty odor. And everybody is holding their cocktails and wearing their ties and they’re not talking about this smelly toad but the room is filled with the stink of it.”
10. One candidate explained, “I favor the death penalty for abortionists and other people who take life.”
11. One candidate said lawmakers in his state capital are “a bunch of crapheads.”
Answers:
1. Keyes
2. Coburn
3. Keyes
4. Keyes
5. Coburn
6. Coburn
7. Keyes
8. Coburn
9. Keyes
10. Coburn
11. Coburn
Regular Carpetbagger readers probably got most, if not all, of these right, but the point is the same. Two fringe right-wingers are seeking Senate seats. One is dismissed as a radical nutjob — more a parody of a candidate than a serious contender — while the other is supposed to be a qualified leader.
As these quotes (hopefully) demonstrate, they’re both mad as a hatter.