UPDATE: Keyes v. Obama

Alan Keyes has indeed decided to run against Barack Obama for the Illinois Senate despite the fact that he isn't from Illinois and has great disdain for carpetbagging. See my previous post on the subject for what exactly he had to say about Hillary's run for the Senate.

Today's Talking Points Memo is kind enough to supply Keyes's explanation for his change of heart:

As Keyes told his new Illinois supporters today, he was at first dead-set against running for senate in another state. But then he was shown copies of Barack Obama's state legislative voting record and he decided he had no choice -- flip flop or no flip flop -- but to jump into the ring. "I'll tell you by the time I got through the records, I was convinced that somebody had to run against Barack Obama," he said. And then after this long dark night of the soul Keyes spent with Obama's voting records he decided that "I must leave the land of my forefathers [i.e., Maryland] in order to defend the land of my spirit, of my conscience and my heart -- and I believe that that land is Illinois."

But how was Keyes chosen in the first place? Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House and Representative from Illinois (and apparently ex-coach) put it this way on Meet The Press:

As a head coach, you know, you put together your football team, and you got your starting quarterback and your best running back and your line and your defense. You're all ready to go. Season starts, and your running back has an infraction with the law and does something wrong, and he's gone from the team. And then you got to go down to the second and third and fourth levels. I spent five weeks trying to find good people, everywhere from a good state senator that we had by the name of Steve Rauschenberger, who I thought he could have...and, you know, he didn't have enough money. I talked to Mike Ditka, and I decided maybe he made a good decision. I talked to a guy name Gary Fenzig, who was a great star, Harvard-Yale, star for the Chicago Bears. He couldn't. And the problem in Illinois, you've got to have $10 million to run; $6 million or $7 million of that has to be done for name I.D. I got down last week to interviewing a 70-year-old guy, who was a great farm broadcaster in Illinois. He decided since his health problems--he couldn't do it. You know, we were down--we needed to find somebody to run, somebody who wanted to run. And, you know, Alan Keyes wants to run, and I hope he's a good candidate.