The Friday Political Thread: No Sleep 'Til Alan Keyes Edition

David Weigel | April 25, 2008

The primary season is churning again, finally, with a mere 11 days until the next Democratic primaries, and a bit month than a month til the utter end of the primaries.

Unconvincing Quote of the Week
"Well, I didn't know anything about it." - Hillary Clinton on her husband's infamous pardons of Weather Underground members.

The Week in Brief
- Hillary Clinton chose to re-enact Rocky II instead of Rocky, and won Pennsylvania. (The analogy collapses if you consider PA a round of a fight and not a fight all on its own.)

- "Screw it," said Obama. "I'm going to dump my money on ads in every remaining primary."

- Fred Thompson sat up (almost) straight in his sofa bed to disclaim interest in joining the GOP ticket.

- John McCain followed in LBJ's footsteps to talk poverty. (There actually were massive poverty reductions in the 1970s in the area McCain's visiting, but they were wiped away in the 1980s.)

- The North Carolina GOP engaged in one of the most obvious rope-a-dopes in recent political history: Announce an ad, get people to condemn it before it even airs, raise money on the outrage, then finally run it.

- Alan Keyes went to New York to battle for the Constitution Party's nomination, and a November Obama rematch. UPDATE: Keyes lost the nomination in a landslide to Chuck Baldwin. "Who's Chuck Baldwin?" Somebody far less spent and pathetic than Alan Keyes.

Below the Fold
- Kos argues that mayoral endorsements can win the next primaries for Obama. (They didn't too a ton for him in Ohio.)

- Suddenly infamous Nazi candidate Tony Zirkle responds to critics.

- Robert VerBruggen reviews Matt Yglesias.

- R.W. Apple (circa 1992) muses on the unelectability of Bill Clinton. I'm torn on whether Clinton '92 was more electable than Obama '08. Obama's scandals seem pale next to Clinton's womanizing and draft-dodging, but Clinton was, well, a white Southerner.

This week's Politics 'n' Prog band is Genesis, from their first and best batch of songs in the post-Peter Gabriel era. Its title is superficially relevant to the Democrats' situation.

SUNDAY UPDATE: This Mike Ferguson video with Alan Keyes, the first after his career ended (again!) on the floor of the Constitution Party convention, is priceless. 14 or 15 minutes of it are Keyes's typical gibberish about "God's breath" and "the fruit pointing you in the right direction," but this piece of nonsense was really special:

In the act of procreation, people are joyfully, ecstatically, with great joy in every fiber of their being, saying "yes" to the coming of that new life. And then in abortion, they kill it. So what, in fact, my political career is, is the paradigm and pattern of that which I am trying to stop for the child. I kind of represent, in political terms, the abortion. You're invited in, then they kill you. You're invited in, then they kill you.

I would quibble with one part of this: Sex is far more satisfying than inviting Alan Keyes to a party.