STEVE EDWARDS, HOST: After more than 6 weeks of résumés, interviews, and help-wanted ads, the Illinois Republican Party now has its Senate candidate.

CLIP, ALAN KEYES, CANDIDACY ANNOUNCEMENT SPEECH: "The battle is for us, but I have confidence because the victory is for God."

STEVE EDWARDS, HOST: Hello, I'm Steve Edwards. Today on Eight Forty-Eight, Alan Keyes joins us in studio to talk about his candidacy and the campaign ahead.

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EDWARDS: Republican Alan Keyes embarks on his first full day of campaigning for Illinois' open U.S. senate seat today. Yesterday the 54-year old Maryland resident announced he was entering the race against Democrat Barack Obama and two other candidates. During a campaign kickoff celebration in Arlington Heights, Mr. Keyes wasted little time rallying the troops.

CLIP, KEYES: Go forward now into your neighborhoods and into your communities, and back to your schools and your workplace and your churches. Tell them that the battle is joined.

EDWARDS: Keyes enters the battle for the U.S. Senate seat with just three months to go before the election day. But he's no stranger to political campaigns. He ran twice for President of the United States and lost two previous bids for the U.S. Senate in Maryland.

Before his entry into elective politics, he served in the U.S. State Department, rising to the rank of Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations in the Reagan Administration. Keyes also served as Ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council. He has a Ph.D in government from Harvard University, and briefly served as interim president of Alabama A&M University. He is the author of two books and has hosted the nationally syndicated radio program "America's Wake-Up Call." He's married and has 3 children, and I'm pleased to welcome him to Eight Forty-Eight this morning.

It's nice to have you with us, Ambassador Keyes.

KEYES: It's good to be here, thank you.

EDWARDS: Why should the voters of Illinois choose you as their next U.S. Senator?

KEYES: I think the most important thing is that Illinois has contributed to this country a great political tradition. That tradition is summed up in its appellation "The Land of Lincoln." Lincoln's statesmanship, I think, was the foundation of the Republican Party, it was really the foundation of the way America has understood itself, as it came out of the bitter divisions of the Civil War, reunited on the basis of a commitment to American principles, articulated in his famous Gettysburg speech, "We are dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."

Barack Obama represents somebody who has turned his back on that tradition.

EDWARDS: How so?

KEYES: On issue after issue, he actually rejects those principles. On abortion, for instance, he takes the position that our rights are not based on the Creator's will but on the CHOICE of human beings. He carries it so far that he has actually stood aside and refused to support a bill that would have stopped live-birth abortions. That is, if a baby is born alive during the course of an abortion, you can just put that living child aside and let it die. And he didn't want to stop that heinous practice.

I think that kind of extremist rejection of who we are is contrary to every basic principle of conscience and decency that America represents. And I think that it represents the challenge that's really here in Illinois: are we going to have from the state of Lincoln--who, in essence, laid the foundations for the conscience of America, that won World War II, that fought Communism--are we going to have somebody who has rejected the principles that Lincoln fought to preserve? And that's what got me into this race, because I think that's unacceptable.

EDWARDS: Taking up the issue of abortion for just a moment, what do you say to those on the other side who suggest that your stance on abortion--your opposition to it in all cases--is, in its own way, an extremist view?

KEYES: Oh no, I oppose abortion in principle. There is no extremism in being an American. And when I have made the argument, of course it's been very clear, it's not just a matter of sentiment and preference. We have a creed here. The opposition to slavery was based on that creed, for instance. The fight for civil rights was based on it. The fight for worker's rights and women's was based on it. We respect the fact that every individual, regardless of their circumstances, their material wealth, their educational background, they are entitled to respect for their human dignity. If we reject that principle in the case of the most innocent and helpless among us, we have destroyed it for all of us.

That's what Lincoln understood. It's why he fought so hard against the idea that you could embrace the extension of slavery into the territories that would essentially have transformed the whole basis of the American Union. That's what people, unfortunately, who are embracing this argument in favor of abortion are doing: they're adopting the slaveholder's view of human liberty, that it's really a matter of choice, the way Stephen Douglas thought it was--you know, "if people CHOOSE to have slavery that's fine." Well I'm sorry. If you make a choice that's contrary to the fundamental principles of justice that define America, that's unacceptable. And that's where I've always stood.

EDWARDS: You're also on the record, as a natural outgrowth of your position on abortion, supporting the passage of a human life amendment to the Constitution. Let's play that out for just a moment. Let's assume that that amendment does become part of the Constitution. What, then, should be the penalty for a woman who violates that law and goes ahead with an abortion?

KEYES: I think that that's a premature question. The first thing we look at, and have always looked at, is, how have we established protections for the basic rights of individuals? The second thing we look at is, if people are going out there and trying to establish businesses that will PROFIT FROM the violation of basic human rights--the slave trade, for instance--we're gonna stop it.

As a matter of fact, that was one of the first steps, even when they weren't moving against slavery, itself, one of the first steps our Founders took was to move against the slave trade. So I think that the main objective ought to be not to try to be adding burdens to people who are already in a difficult emotional situation, but to look at those people trying to profiteer from that situation, the way they are in the abortion industry, and saying, "We're going to stop that." And that's what I think needs to be done.

EDWARDS: All right, so you wouldn't, under a Keyes view of this amendment, go after and prosecute women who would have an abortion after a human life amendment were passed? You would prosecute those who . . .

KEYES: Right. If you look at the way that that whole thing was handled when the states--by the way, before the Supreme Court's decision, practically every state in the Union had laws against abortion. Those laws were not directed at the mother in the case, they were directed at the profiteers taking advantage of her situation.

That's the way decent, fair-minded Americans have handled this situation in the past. It's not a new question. I think we're a people who understand the human dimensions of these problems. We're not callous, we're not going to disregard people's suffering. But we're not going to disregard the rights of innocent people, either.

EDWARDS: Let me back up to an issue that has swirled around your candidacy for the last week or so, since it was a possibility here in Illinois, and that has to do with this idea that you, coming from Maryland, not being a resident of Illinois, are indeed a carpetbagger. Here's what you told Pat Buchanan on Fox news in March of 2000, in reference to Hillary Clinton's entry into the Senate race in New York. You said, "I deeply resent the destruction of Federalism represented by Hillary Clinton's willingness to go into a state she doesn't even live in and pretend to represent people there, so I certainly wouldn't imitate it." Why are you imitating it now?

KEYES: I'm not. And I think I deeply object to that.

I made that clear to folks when they first approached me about this a few days ago. I said, "No." I have made it clear, on the record, that I oppose this. I believe in states' rights. I believe in state sovereignty. Many of my positions on specific issues, education, law enforcement, how we approach the marriage question, things of this kind are based on respect for state sovereignty, and I'm not going to violate it.

So the first person to wrestle with that issue was me. And I had to do it quite seriously and deeply, because I won't take a step that violates my principles.

EDWARDS: Where do you draw the difference?

KEYES: And as I explained--I don't know if you looked at my speech yesterday, but the whole thing was devoted practically to this issue and how I thought it through on the basis of my principles. And the truth of the matter is, if it's a matter of a quest for personal ambition, where people of national reputation are using the states as stepping-stones for their personal ambition--that's what Hillary Clinton did. She did it systematically. She looked around the country. She weighed up which state would be the best prospect. She went in months beforehand to prepare the ground and build up supposed interest. Then she invaded the state and so forth. It was done methodically, and carefully, and calculatedly in order to serve HER ambition. And THAT is wrong.

In this particular case, however, people came to me, and they said, "We have a problem. We have a crisis. You have the ability to help us meet that crisis."

On the face of it, that's just like people in New York or any other place who are faced with a crisis, like 9-11 or a major flood or disaster. They turn to the people in the rest of the country and say, "Ya'll come, we need help!" That's not a violation of state sovereignty, that's an exercise of state sovereignty.

But that wasn't enough. I looked at them and said, "But wait a minute. I'm not going to do anything that LOOKS as if it erodes principle. Why should I step in here? You should be looking for somebody from Illinois to do this fight." And then they said, "Look! You haven't looked at Barack Obama's record." And I looked at it. And what I found was that there is a deep issue of principle involved here. As a matter of fact, it's the same issue of principle that was the basis for Lincoln's statesmanship.

When there is a threat to the principles of our national Union, that is the one time when you limit your respect for state sovereignty. That essentially is why the Civil War occurred: because the southern states were trying to exercise their sovereignty in such a way as to destroy the principles of the national Union.

Barack Obama represents positions that destroy those principles. And he was going to waltz into the Senate of the United States without apparent, effective opposition in order to represent the VERY STATE where Lincoln's statesmanship had been formulated and offered as a gift to the country. People felt that this was a travesty, that it was going to be deeply damaging to Illinois as well as the nation. And after I looked at it and thought about it seriously I agreed with them.

And so this is a step of principle. It is kind of the area where you look at it and say, OK. This was the time when, for the sake of the very principles that make state sovereignty important, right, you are going to violate your, MY sensitivity to that issue and respond to the call of the people of Illinois.

EDWARDS: Let's listen to a comment from Republican state senator Kirk Dillard who's a member of the party's Central Committee. He said this yesterday in reference to your candidacy and some concerns that not only might you not represent the broad interests of Illinoisans, but might not represent the interests of the Republican Party. Here's what he had to say.

CLIP, STATE SENATOR KIRK DILLARD: When I'm trying to have women, moderate women and Hispanics and hold my base of Asian Americans--he might not be the best candidate to do that.

EDWARDS: That's Republican State Senator Kirk Dillard yesterday in reference to your candidacy. What do you say to reassure him that you can be that kind of candidate who reaches out to all people?

KEYES: Well, I guess I'm kind of bemused by that remark. Maybe he doesn't know his own base, because the issues which a lot of people try to use--and they say, "Oh, this doesn't reflect the voters." That's nonsense.

Take the issue of traditional marriage. People try to pretend that that's an issue where everybody wants to rush out and embrace gay marriage. That's a lie. We saw the proof of that, by the way, next door in Missouri, close by, where the issue was put to the people and OVERWHELMINGLY they rejected the idea of gay marriage. As a matter of fact, that's been true every time it's been put to the people in any state in this Union where they actually had a free vote. And I think that that's true, as I know--because I've been in here to support people on this issue in Illinois--that's true in Illinois.

He talked about Hispanic Americans. I don't know. I take a strong position that supports the respect for innocent life in the womb. And everybody knows that when you poll the Hispanic community, reflecting, I think, deeply-held religious views--because a lot of people in the Hispanic community are Roman Catholics, like myself. And they take the position that you gotta respect that life. So why would he want to suggest that, because I champion a position that's close to the heart of the people in the Hispanic Community, that's somehow going to cause a problem for him? I think he has a problem if he is not sensitive to those views which are deeply held by the very constituents that he referred to.

EDWARDS: And why do you think the Republican Party, certainly in this state, and indeed elsewhere, hasn't been as successful in reaching out to those groups. Specifically, let's talk about Latino voters.

KEYES: Actually, I'm not sure that's true. But I think that they've had a problem, if any, in securing support [because] it's hard to secure support from people when you're not clear about your own views. I think that's a mistake that's often made by people.

And from what I gather, talking to folks over the last little while here in Illinois, part of the problem is that if you have "me-too" candidates, people who are standing up and basically saying, "I wear a Republican label, but I'm a Democrat, too," you're not offering people a choice. And the people who actually believe differently than Democrats who want to violate basic rights, Democrats who want to tax us into oblivion, Democrats who want to spend us into disaster, and you're not clearly articulating the views that offer people a choice, then you're not going to see how much support you have, because the people who would support those views, seeing nothing that excites them, will stay out of the political process. And THAT'S where I think the problem has been.

EDWARDS: If you're just joining us, we're talking with Alan Keyes here on Eight Forty-Eight on Chicago Public Radio. He's the Illinois Republican Party's nominee in the race for the open U.S. Senate seat that's currently held by Republican Peter Fitzgerald.

I want to come back to this notion of principle for a moment, especially as it relates to the issue of same-sex marriage. When you talk about those rights endowed by God, and you talk about issues of Affirmative Action or any other issue, one of the core principles, as it relates to the notions of natural law, is the idea, as you well know, that you cannot be a judge for those things which you are powerless to affect--gender, race and so on. If in fact, as some scientific studies suggest, that being homosexual is, in fact, biologically determined, what then would be wrong with granting rights, and even the right to marry?

KEYES: First, NO study has made such a determination. That's simply a fallacy. There IS NO study that has made a determination that this is genetically determined. And I say that unequivocally. I've looked at the question many times.

Second, we are all, in a certain sense, genetically and biologically predisposed to a kind of sexual promiscuity--you know, to want to engage and indulge our sexual appetites in ways that have no respect for basic human requirements, conventions, family responsibilities, and so forth. That's not just true of homosexual people, that's true of heterosexual people--you know, healthy red-blooded males who are sexually attracted to every attractive woman they see, and vice versa. We, as human beings, cannot assert that our sexual drive is uncontrollable. If we do, civilization is ended.

These are not things we can't control. Our passions are precisely subject to our moral will and our rationality. That's what makes us human. So if you're going to tell me that the sexual impulse of anybody, not just homosexuals, but anybody, is uncontrollable and you've "gotta do it," then you have removed us from the realm of human moral choice, and you have consigned us to the realm of instinctive necessity and animal nature. And we are not there. I will not deny our humanity.

So I think that in this area, as in all the areas of passion--our sexual passion, our anger, our greed, our resentment, our jealousy--these are all passions that can be very strong in us, but which we know must be disciplined and regulated by our moral will for the sake of conscience and human community. And we have to expect that of one another.

Do you realize that the very idea of freedom and self-government is absurd if we are in fact subject to uncontrollable passion? Then we're not free. We're slaves to our passions. But that's not so. We believe, in this country, in liberty--and the foundation of liberty is true moral choice. And that moral choice is possible, with respect to sexual action, to such a degree that you don't even have to engage in sexual activity. You can refrain from it altogether if you think that is required by the dictates of moral conscience. And that capacity shouldn't be denied in any human being.

And I don't think it's a question of homosexual or heterosexual. It's a question of humanity.

EDWARDS: Let's move to the area of foreign policy. Your major opponent in this race, Democrat Barack Obama, has been very critical of the war in Iraq. What's your position on that?

KEYES: I, in fact, haven't understood a lot of that criticism, and I think it's been very unfair. I think, in hindsight, people looking at it and saying, "Well, we see no evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Therefore the decision was wrong"--people don't make decisions based on what we know NOW (and that, by the way, is still a questionable conclusion, because it's still debated), you have to base your decision, as President, on what you know at the time, and what the best intelligence being offered you tells you at the time. If the best intelligence tells the President . . .

EDWARDS: So you would support the President.

KEYES: . . . that there is a threat that could result in the deaths of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Americans, that weapons of mass destruction might fall into the hands of terrorists from Iraq, he'd be irresponsible if he DIDN'T act. The President acted on the information he had. And if he erred, he erred on the side of defending the lives of people in this country in the midst of a very threatening war. And I'd rather have a president who errs on the side of defending our lives than a president who sits on his hands and lets us die by the tens of thousands.

EDWARDS: Yes, but as you know, one of the criticisms in this context is, to what extent the intelligence may have been shaped by ingoing predispositions by either the President or members of his own cabinet.

KEYES: Well, I have got to tell you, I think that that is definitely a criticism that ought to make us take a second look at how we are organizing our intelligence community, at how they are thinking about the work that they do. But ultimately, the defective nature of that intelligence--given the timing, right, because we are talking about things that actually reflected, and I thought about this during the testimony before the commission, years of accumulated results over several administrations, and that's what's being looked at right now. You can't blame the President because of the faults that existed in the intelligence that he got. And I think that we need to move to correct those faults. But we shouldn't be saying that the President was at fault because he did the best he could to defend the security of the people of this country.

EDWARDS: I want to pick up on one aspect of this. This comes from your website, and it's a quote related to foreign policy. And you say, "I would want to renounce the idea that we have the right to interfere in an aggressive way with the affairs of other nations. I do not believe that when our ideas are rejected, we should resort to war in order to force people to accept the deal that is dictated on our terms." So what's the difference here?

KEYES: It's a huge difference. That's not what we were doing in Iraq. And as I have often explained to audiences, it's one of the reasons why I have been very blunt about being uncomfortable with all the rhetoric of nation-building, and, "We're going in to overthrow the tyrant and establish democracy."

EDWARDS: Yes, very much so!

KEYES: I always criticize that, because that is not an objective for which you can legitimately launch an offensive war, you taking the first shot. No. But that's not the case for our justification for Iraq. We are in the midst of a war against terror. That war against terror was launched with a deep and destructive blow against us. In order to defend against the terrorists we have to move against the terrorist cadre, the terrorist infrastructure, the terrorist planners, and the terrorists network wherever it may be. And when we make a judicious judgment that someone forms an element of that threat, we have, in self-defense, the right to move against them. That's the proper rubric under which the decision to go into Iraq was made. That is the argument, by the way, that the Administration made, and I have faulted them because they put out also a lot of other rhetoric that I think distracted people from the real and essential purpose--because the real and essential justification is our national security, in response to the threat that we face in this war against terror.

EDWARDS: We're running short on time. There are many more issues that I'd like to touch on, and I hope that we'll have a chance to do so in the coming weeks. Let me come, though, to a couple of issues that are of specific concern to voters here in this area. One has to do with the airport situation, as you well know, both incumbent U.S. Senators from Illinois have been very active on this issue---whether or not to expand O'Hare Airport or to establish a third regional airport in Peotone. If elected, what would be your position as a U.S. Senator representing Illinois on these two issues?

KEYES: Honestly, right now I don't know. But I will tell you this: one, I know the urgency of the congestion problem because I'm one of those people who flies all over this country and I visit Chicago airport a lot, let me tell you. And I think we all have experiences bordering on nightmares because of the difficulties that arise. And that's because Illinois is so important as a hub for everything--transportation, and business, and communications in America. That's step number one. So the problem MUST be addressed. The stalemate's got to end for the sake of Illinois, its economic future and for the sake of the country.

Second . . .

EDWARDS: The question is, how?

KEYES: It has to be done in a way that respects, I believe, the grassroots interests of people. People living in their neighborhoods and people who have to go about their daily lives should not simply be disregarded and sacrificed in order to deal with this issue. So you want a balance.

I am not going to pretend that, at the moment, I understand any more than the complexity of the cross-cutting issues that are involved here. I'm going to be doing a serious study. I'm going to be listening to people about this issue over the course of the next little while. And I'm going to try to reach a conclusion that is in the best interest of BOTH the economic future of this state AND the quality of life of the people who will be in areas affected by the decision that is made. And that's going to be a hard choice. That's what everybody has been trying to do. And I'm going to make my judicious judgments about where I come out in terms of doing that. But I'll tell you one thing: the one thing I won't be bound by is any existing set of political interests and obligations. There are questions here that involve influence and power of people who have been benefiting from existing arrangements, politically and otherwise. Thank God I will be free of any need to have to think about anything but the real interests and the best interests of the state of Illinois. And that's what I'll do.

EDWARDS: Alan Keyes, thank you very much for joining us this morning. We really appreciate it.

KEYES: You're welcome, thank you.

EDWARDS: Alan Keyes is the Republican Party's candidate in the race for the open U.S. Senate seat currently held by Republican Peter Fitzgerald. He's facing Democrat Barack Obama and two other candidates in the fall campaign. We'll continue our conversations and our look at the campaign in the weeks ahead here on Eight Forty-Eight.