GOP's African Americans keeping distance from Keyes

Alan Keyes, the Republicans' choice for the U.S. Senate, left his party's national convention early Thursday to return to Illinois and watch George W. Bush's acceptance speech on television. There was little chance he would be missed here. That's not surprising, given the stir he caused with comments about Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter's homosexual lifestyle. But Keyes' campaign also hasn't been publicly embraced by powerful African-American Republicans at the convention. Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, never touched on the Keyes campaign despite evoking Keyes' opponent Barack Obama's name in his speech on Tuesday. Steele quipped that Obama gave a "moving defense of the conservative principles of the Republican Party" in his speech at the Democratic National Convention in July. "I won't comment on Ambassador Keyes' decision to run the race that he is running in Illinois," Steele said in an interview. "He has made a very strategic decision. Maybe he sees something in polling trends that I don't see. I don't know. I can't comment on that." [more ]