Local Man goes West

Maryland's own Alan Keyes is heading to Illinois. He is running for the Senate against one of the rising stars of the Democratic Party, Barack Obama. He has already compared Obama's position on abortion to slavery, and he's just getting started.
When I was in middle school I heard him speak on the television. He was running for the Senate then, too. Somehow I was impressed by his oratory, which is, as many have said, skillful but grandiloquent, somehow both impressive and cartoonish. Heck, I was twelve.
It's all so hilariously strange for the Republicans to have sent this odd duck to defeat a man more than a few commentators have decided, on the strength of his DNC speech, is likely to be the first black president of the US. What the hell does it all mean? After all, Keyes is an obvious carpetbagger who has, in the past, made special condemnation of Hillary Clinton's carpetbagging. He has admited he doesn't know much about the state, which isn't exactly a plus. And to top it of, not to go all Krauthammer, but Keyes' ego is preposterously huge. See this quote from his RenewAmerica website:

"[Keyes] Is capable of leading our country to widespread moral and political renewal, once all of America has a chance to see and hear, first-hand, his self-evident brilliance."

Ouch. Pretty big talk for somebody who couldn't even pull 30% in his 1992 race against Mikulski.
The only possible excuses for Keyes to have been chosen have to do with race, and it don't reflect well on the Republicans that they would throw an out of towner at their senate race essentially because of the color of his skin.