Keyes’ Emphasis on Social Issues Excites GOP Activists : Politics: Presidential candidate says abortion is at root of moral decline. He has all but eclipsed Dornan.

Carolie Patton remembers how she felt when she heard the booming voice coming from the radio.

It was several weeks ago on the conservative syndicated show “Focus on the Family.” A Republican presidential candidate was sermonizing about the failing moral character of the country.

“That speech,” the Maryland Republican said recently with a gleam in her eyes, “that eight-minute speech; that went: Pow!”

The speaker was Alan L. Keyes, and after hearing him on the radio, Patton arranged for the talk show host to speak here at her town’s Memorial Day observance. Her reaction fit the pattern of Keyes’ campaign. No one really believes Keyes has much of a chance to become the first African American to win the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, but there is no doubt about the excitement he has generated for GOP activists.

To take just one example, “Focus on the Family” aired Keyes’ speech twice to meet audience demands, drawing a response of more than 10,000 telephone calls and letters, according to Paul Hetrick, a spokesman for the program.

Delivering his message with the sort of impassioned pulpit style that takes predominantly white Republican audiences by surprise, Keyes has brought the party faithful to their feet at gatherings across the country with an ardent conservative message warning that moral decline is at the root of all of the nation’s problems. Abortion, he insists, is the root of that moral decline, and he routinely compares the fight against the procedure to the 19th-Century struggle against slavery.

In the process, Keyes has demonstrated the power of conservative radio to spread the message of a highly ideological candidate with limited money.

Eclipsing Dornan

He also has all but eclipsed Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), his kindred spirit on social issues who had hoped that his own experience on talk radio and his years as one of Congress’ most fiery conservative orators would help him dominate the stylistic and political niche that Keyes has now grabbed.

At the outset of the campaign, Dornan was convinced that he could become the social conservatives’ favorite underdog, based on his colorful record in Congress and his passionate speeches about the “cultural meltdown” of the country.

Unafraid to take on President Clinton, Gov. Pete Wilson, Sen. Phil Gramm or any other political rival, Dornan was widely seen as the man who would drive the debate more to the right on social issues, such as abortion and gay rights.

Then along came Keyes. Today, he is living Dornan’s dream, speaking up as the unabashed voice of full-throttle social conservatism.

Even Dornan’s daughter has come under the spell. At the first GOP candidate forum of the year in New Hampshire, she was seen at the back of the room with a slack-jaw gaze as Keyes spoke, mouthing the words: “He’s wonderful.”

Dornan “has been a spear-carrier for the right on the right-to-life issue for decades,” said James P. Pinkerton, a lecturer at the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University and a former George Bush Administration official. But “Dornan’s misfortune is that Keyes, who does not have nearly as much of a record, is the most dynamic speaker in current American politics today.”

Not only has Keyes almost blocked Dornan out of the race, he is also “making it harder for [Patrick J.] Buchanan to corner the market on moral issues,” said William Kristol, a Republican strategist who was Keyes’ roommate at Harvard University.

Even Kristol, however, gives Keyes no chance of winning the nomination, noting that his former roommate’s rhetorical job is made easier by the fact that he is not really in the race to win.

“It’s easy to be lively and interesting when you don’t need to modulate your message to get 51% of the vote,” Kristol said.

Born in New York

Lively and interesting Keyes has proved himself to be. Each time C-SPAN broadcasts a candidate forum, interest in Keyes picks up in New Hampshire, scene of the campaign’s first primary next February, said Charles Arlinghaus, executive director of the New Hampshire GOP. Keyes’ speeches, he said, prompt people to ask: “Whoa, wait. Who is this guy?”

Alan Lee Keyes was born in New York City almost 45 years ago and brought up in a devout Roman Catholic military family. He had relatively little political experience before entering the presidential contest--a stint as a mid-level State Department official in the Ronald Reagan Administration and two unsuccessful runs for the U.S. Senate from Maryland, in 1988 and 1992. In recent years he has worked as a radio talk-show host.

Despite help from Kristol, Keyes received only 38% of the vote in his first Maryland race. On the second go-round, he was even less successful, gathering only 29% after disclosing he paid himself a salary of $8,500 a month from his campaign fund--a move that was legal but controversial. Keyes also created controversy when he criticized the GOP hierarchy for refusing to back his candidacy and failing to court the African American vote.

That same issue--the impact of Keyes’ race on his political prospects--continues to hover around the edges of this campaign.

On the one hand, being black means Keyes “has standing,” Dornan said. “Being of African American descent, when he compares abortion to slavery, it has a resounding impact that makes moderates avert his gaze with shame.”

At the same time, many analysts and Keyes wonder just how open the GOP really is to reaching minority voters.

“I think that there have been some Republicans who were not, and maybe still are not, open to the tremendous opportunity that exists for the Republican Party to reach out to people in all different kinds of communities; bring them in on the basis of . . . conservative values,” Keyes said. “Part of it is because some of the Republicans who thought in those terms thought that it would be done on an economic basis, like [former Housing and Urban Development Secretary] Jack Kemp.”

But Keyes said his message about “moral priorities” is a unifying theme that reaches across all segments of society--from white Christian evangelicals to African American communities.

“I don’t run as a black candidate. But neither am I going to forget that I’m black while I’m running.”

Bluntness Welcomed

The bluntness of Keyes’ appeal, which has cost him politically in the past, is now welcomed by activists.

“Some of his beliefs, I know, are controversial, particularly on the abortion issue, but the way he articulates that is something that I think I have not heard anybody else present,” said Roger O’Bryon, a 52-year-old medical sales representative who rarely took his eyes off Keyes as he listened to the candidate’s Memorial Day speech here.

Keyes’ style, said O’Bryon and his wife, Ruth, makes him seem sincere--something they and many others find lacking in other candidates. “I think he’s so strong in his basic beliefs and his basic principles that he comes across as if he does not waver from those beliefs,” Roger O’Bryon said.

Keyes’ speech here displayed much of the conservative fire that has proved so attractive to Republican activists. “I hope this [event] is not paid for with public funds,” he said at one point, turning to this small town’s mayor, who stood near him on the speaker’s platform. “If we mention the Creator, and it’s paid for with public funds, we’ve violated the separation of church and state.”

Using his hands and arm movements to add emphasis, Keyes exhorted the Memorial Day crowd to think about the moral values and the belief in God that he said are needed to steer the nation toward a greater destiny.

“Remember not only what human beings have done to make this nation great, but what God may do to make it greater still.”

“I think if we can somewhere find once again that spirit of humbleness, that spirit of real conviction about the power that transcends and shapes and disciplines our all, then we shall find our way back to the path of freedom that leads not to the crime and violence and the broken families and the lost hopes, but to the freedom that instead leads to the finer destiny of mankind,” he said.

It is speeches like this, seen and heard largely through the unfiltered medium of C-SPAN and on conservative radio, that have generated Keyes’ reputation as a candidate willing to speak bluntly because he has nothing to lose.

While others, even Buchanan, have tried to downplay the abortion controversy, arguing that Republicans should not make the issue a “litmus test,” Keyes has vowed precisely the opposite, warning Republicans that anti-abortion activists will turn against the party if it abandons its anti-abortion stand.

He has criticized Gramm, saying that the GOP senator’s focus on reducing the federal budget deficit ignores the fact that money alone cannot cure the country’s moral bankruptcy. And during a recent speech before foreign policy experts, he labeled as “extreme” Buchanan’s nationalist message, maintaining that the United States has international leadership responsibilities and the issue is knowing when to get in or stay out of international conflicts.

Polls continue to show Keyes and Dornan at the bottom of the GOP heap. But by another barometer, Keyes has clearly won some hearts.

“I got two standing ovations in South Carolina, and he got four,” Dornan said.