Alan Keyes made it official yesterday, announcing his candidacy and offering the kind of sentiment that captures the GOP’s perspective on this race: “I’m not going to stand here and with tremendous ease promise you a victory….”
But to get a sense of what key national figures from Illinois, including, say, the Speaker of the House, think about this race, consider Dennis Hastert’s cringe-inducing comments on Meet the Press yesterday.
While describing Barack Obama as a “rock star,” Hastert went out of his way to let everyone know he played no role whatsoever in the Keyes selection.
“Well, I tell you what, I was out of town when that happened…. I’ve been working for five weeks trying to find a candidate. Here we are.”
Hastert also all-but admitted that the state party was absolutely desperate and that GOP officials settled on Keyes as they hit rock bottom.
“I spent five weeks trying to find good people…. You know, we were down — we needed to find somebody to run, somebody who wanted to run. And, you know, Alan Keyes wants to run, and I hope he’s a good candidate.”
They’ll probably be leaving this out of the Keyes-for-Senate TV commercials. Assuming there are Keyes TV commercials.