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Alan Keyes Readying Run for President?

It has now been three months since the launch of the Alan Keyes-backed(link is external) “We Need Alan Keyes For President” movement and the organization’s petition urging him to run has garnered a mere 1700 signatures(link is external)  - but that seems to be enough to convince(link is external) Keyes that he is needed in the GOP primary:

Several Republican presidential hopefuls have committed to be in the Mountain State for the West Virginia Republican Presidential Convention.

A spokesman for the West Virginia GOP says 10 candidates have registered for their February convention.

Among those attending will be Sam Brownback, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, Alan Keyes, John McCain, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and Gene Zarwell.  

More interestingly, it appears as if Keyes might also be participating in the upcoming “Values Voter Presidential Debate(link is external)” September 17th in Florida.  According to the latest press release(link is external): “Seven Republican candidates have confirmed their attendance, but hundreds of encouraging calls are being made to the few remaining unconfirmed candidates.”

Those “remaining unconfirmed candidates” just happen to be the top four Republican hopefuls, each one of which has declared that they won’t be attending(link is external):

The festivities, however, look likely to go off without a marquee name. Queried yesterday by The New York Sun, the McCain campaign cited a scheduling conflict. "We are not attending," a spokeswoman for Mr. McCain, Brooke Buchanan, replied by e-mail. "It's the last day of the No Surrender tour — we will be in South Carolina."

Likewise, the Romney campaign's Florida spokeswoman, Gail Gitcho, told the Sun that the former Massachusetts governor had "declined due to a scheduling conflict."

Mr. Thompson's press office also is citing "another event on his calendar that day."

The Giuliani camp didn't even bother with the scheduling-conflict ruse, providing the Sun with the text of a letter the former mayor's campaign manager, Michael DuHaime, sent to the debate's organizers on Friday. "Thank you for your kind invitation for Mayor Giuliani to attend a presidential debate hosted by Values Voters," Mr. DuHaime wrote. "Unfortunately Mayor Giuliani will be unable to accept your invitation."

A WorldNetDaily article announcing that WND’s own Joseph Farah will be moderating the event(link is external), lists only six confirmed participants: Duncan Hunter, Mike Huckabee, Tom Tancredo, Sam Brownback, Ron Paul and John Cox.  But since the Values Voter press release says that seven have agreed to participate, could Keyes be that final “candidate?” It is entirely possible, considering that an earlier version(link is external) of the very same WorldNetDaily article listed Keyes as participating, as does the most recent Rick Scarborough Report(link is external).

Perhaps Keyes should hurry up and decide if he is indeed running because a presidential campaign would almost surely raise some concerns about his continuing participation(link is external) in Vision America’s supposedly non-partisan(link is external)70 Weeks to Save America(link is external)Crusade(link is external), not to mention concerns about the fairness of the Values Voter debate considering that Keyes was one of the founders of the very organization(link is external) that is sponsoring it..