Politics & Power Quote by Alan Keyes

Keyes isn’t really arguing about Jesus; he’s arguing about who gets to claim moral custody of Christianity in American politics. By casting the ballot as a proxy for holiness, he turns a mundane democratic act into a litmus test for spiritual legitimacy, then uses that test to exile Obama from the community of the righteous. The line’s force comes from its refusal to name the actual policy dispute up front (at the time, listeners would hear abortion and related questions of sexual ethics and “life” politics). Instead, Keyes reaches for a theological trump card: “inconceivable for Christ.” That word does heavy lifting. It doesn’t invite debate; it declares the matter outside the bounds of imagination, which is another way of saying outside the bounds of permissible disagreement.

The subtext is as political as it is religious. Keyes is positioning himself - and by extension a certain strain of conservative Christianity - as the interpreter of Christ’s voting behavior, even though the premise is deliberately anachronistic. Christ didn’t vote; Keyes needs him to vote so the modern electorate can be sorted into the saved and the suspect. It’s a rhetorical move designed to convert policy preference into moral certainty, and moral certainty into coalition discipline.

In context, this fits the early Obama era’s culture-war anxiety: a charismatic candidate who spoke the language of faith while unsettling the right’s hierarchy of priorities. Keyes answers that threat by narrowing “Christian” to one issue-set, then making disagreement sound not merely wrong but unthinkable.