When Fred Thompson makes his presidential debate debut in Michigan tonight, he won’t have to share the dais with the GOP’s equivalent of Mike Gravel. Alan Keyes did not draft himself into the presidential race until after the debate’s filing deadline. No word on whether he will handcuff himself to the television station and declare a hunger strike, as he did in a 1996.

Although his “exclusion” from tonight’s event in Dearborn was due to his own failure, surrogates for the perennial candidate immediately played the race card. Dr. Levon Yuille, a Keyes supporter in the Wolverine State, stated, “I’m appalled that the Party of Lincoln would not include a man of Dr. Keyes’ stature as part of the upcoming debate, at a time when my party is being accused of being insensitive to the black community. I think we would give our enemy an unnecessary issue that we don’t need in this election.”

And the implied racial blackmail begins. The veiled threat is: include Keyes in future debate, or he will raise a constant charge of racism against the party, potentially harming the eventual nominee. This specter appears as flat and non-threatening as a horror film in its third sequel – and for the same reason.

Alan Keyes has a long and storied history of racial hypersensitivity, blaming his inability to win a political contest – against anyone, anywhere, for anything – on a purportedly “racist” media. “The Man” has proven exceptionally successful at keeping Keyes down, causing voters in two states to reject his three races for U.S. Senate by progressively larger margins. Somehow, the vox populi expressed in those returns convinced Keyes to make two ludicrous bids for president of the United States.

After losing the 2000 election, he tried to draft himself as Bush’s vice president. Then, this summer, the website he owns and controls began carrying a “grassroots” organization’s pleas for the Ambassador to save his country and his party. His supporters made an appearance at the Iowa Straw Poll; Keyes pledged to run if they drummed up sufficient interest. He did not receive a single vote, which convinced him to run for president.

His delusions of grandeur would be comical if they were not seasoned with his omnipresent racial scapegoating. Ironically, while Keyes declares he is not taken seriously as a candidate because he is black, the opposite is true. As David Horowitz observed in 2000, Keyes’ “main constituency consists of pale-faced conservatives so desperate for a black face to defend them against radical attacks that they don’t seem to appreciate the way in which their candidate himself is a radical.” In the intervening seven years, conservative tone-deafness has grown more troubling as others adopted these rhetorical devices: those who opposed Harriet Miers’ appointment to the Supreme Court were portrayed as chauvinists, opponents of mass amnesty as bigots.

Keyes’ brand of radicalism bleeds into policy. In his 2004 race against Barack Obama – for which he was clearly chosen because of his race and his race alone – Keyes endorsed the idea of racial reparations, telling the Chicago Tribune he would exempt black people from all taxation for a generation or two. The great irony was in the Illinois Senate race, the left-wing Democrat shunned the overheated racialist rhetoric embraced by his ultra-conservative Republican challenger.

His attempts to convince everyone he meets that he is right – that “Alan Keyes is Making Sense” – have resulted in flashes of uncontrolled angry or neurotic behavior. His asking a grammar school class for its reaction if he would “pick one of you up and bash your head against the floor and kill you.” His multi-decibel polysyllabic shouting matches. His crowd-surfing for Michael Moore. His assaults on John McCain’s relatives’ CD collection. His branding Mary Cheney a selfish hedonist. His rare insights into Jesus’ voting habits, and his classification of Barack Obama as “an evil man.” Keyes is the only candidate who could make Barack Obama look overqualified and Mike Gravel sound calm and measured.

…And then there is the issue of his relationship with his daughter, Maya. When the media outed her as a lesbian, Keyes denied the allegation with all the credibility of Baghdad Bob. Then he kicked Maya out of her apartment – which was also financed with campaign money – quit paying her college tuition, and stopped speaking to her. Way to “love the sinner,” Alan.

With or without these setbacks, Alan Keyes would lose his sixth straight election this winter. But then, winning does not seem to be the point. Keyes paid himself $100,000 out of his campaign funds when he ran for Paul Sarbanes’ U.S. Senate seat in 1992, doubled his speaking fees after the exposure from his 1996 presidential campaign, and parlayed his showing in the 2000 race into a (very) short-lived MSNBC news program.

Keyes won’t draw black voters to the GOP; he has already proven he can’t do that. Republicans have been “accused of being insensitive to the black community” in every election since Nixon desegregated Southern schools over Yellow Dog Democrats’ objections. In the toxic environment in which the nation’s most prominent civil rights organization can accuse President Bush of lynching James Byrd, keeping an unpopular and failed candidate out of a debate won’t hurt matters.

Still, Keyes’ performance in the debates could have a powerful impact on the presidential nomination – of the Constitution Party. If a moderate is nominated, look for an independent banner on Keyes’ website that reads, “We Need Alan Keyes to Run Third Party!” Or perhaps he will not openly break with the GOP, hoping a vacant Senate seat will open up.

Either way, we will enjoy tonight’s debate, shorn of one pointless vanity campaign.