Self-styled rebel Alan Keyes should be ashamed of himself.

Dozens of interested politics watchers, including me, tuned to PBS for this week's Republican debate hoping to hear, in calm tones, how Rudy Giuliani would protect us, how Mitt Romney would be the authoritarian father we've always lacked, and how Mike Huckabee would make us feel somehow smarter. We wanted to know about tariffs. About the dependence on foreign oil. About the rampant illegal immigration that only folks as bold as, say, Lou Dobbs are willing to address these days with any real conviction. (If we didn't, why would millions of us tune to CNN or Fox News every night—because we like the way the anchors look?!)

Instead, we got hijacked by Urkel in a Men's Warehouse suit.

With a voice like an impersonation of an outraged private school PTA parent, Keyes leapfrogged the distinguished moderator and spoke straight into the camera. With his sleep-deprived eyes locked on America, he vigorously tore away at the Des Moines Register's classy process of discourse, every other candidate on stage, and the political process as a whole in one fell swoop. He also went over his 30 seconds.

"Ask yourself who represents the people they don't let you hear from," Keyes sing-songed. "Who represents the voice that they're absolutely determined to overlook in the discussion of our sovereignty and the betrayal of this people's sovereignty?" "These folks," he said looking around at the other well-to-do candidates (CEOs, doctors, and the like!), "represent the very elite who, year after year after year, have destroyed our Constitution and undermined our strength created by our people in the world.... And yet, the one person willing to talk about that is overlooked time and time again."

Why is that, pray tell?

More unnerving was his post-debate tear through the room where teams of press members tirelessly decode for us regular folk the complicated politics that unfold in these debates—spin alley. When a concerned member of the fourth estate asked the almighty Keyes about his qualifications for participating in the debate (it was a surprise to most), he snapped that he's operating on a "different principle than you all understand." With a stab of the finger at the press persons, he added, "You don't get to define the process of politics in this country. You only think you do."

Who else would Alan Keyes suggest represent the people if not the best and brightest from Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS, and Tucker Carlson? What gives him the right to crash the public airwaves and the Republican Party, storm past the red velvet ropes, and insist that he's not going to play by the rules in getting his message out by any means necessary? Is he ... an anarchist? Or just an extremely worthy recipient of our Monster of the Week label?

Maybe Slate said it best after the debates: "If Rudy Giuliani really were the tough-on-crime candidate, he would have arrested Alan Keyes at the Des Moines Register debate."

Any more rhetoric from this Conor Oberst of politics, and the crazies toiling beneath the decks might just get fired up and decide to take over the ship. And mutiny is not what any of us need.

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