
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 27, 1995                   TAG: 9503270102
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: SAN DIEGO                                 LENGTH: Medium

TALK-SHOW HOST ENTERS GOP FRAY

Alan Keyes, a radio talk show host and foreign affairs aide to President Reagan, entered the race for the Republican nomination for president Sunday.

The 44-year-old host of ``America's Wake-Up Call'' on WCBM in Owings Mills, Md., announced his candidacy at the convention of the California Republican Assembly, a coalition of more than 100 grass-roots conservative clubs in California.

Keyes, who was a State Department policy planner and ambassador to the U.N. Economic and Social Council for the Reagan administration, said he would make abortion the No. 1 issue of his campaign, and he accused two other GOP presidential hopefuls - Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas and commentator Pat Buchanan - of ``putting it on the back burner.''

Buchanan appeared before the same group Saturday and spoke against abortion. Gramm, who addressed the convention later on Sunday, told reporters he supports the GOP platform plank against abortion, but welcomes abortion-rights supporters in the Republican party.

``Abortion is morally wrong. It epitomizes the central issues of our time,'' Keyes said. ``There are those who in the name of a big tent and all that, but really for political expediency, don't want to talk about it.''

In a fiery speech to 300 Republican activists, Keyes outlined a staunchly conservative pro-family, pro-church, anti-tax platform attacking what he described as ``this phony doctrine of separation of church and state.''

``We don't have the right to separate church and state. We must respect the authority from God,'' he said.

Keyes said he traced the most serious problems facing the nation - crime, drugs, failing schools, welfare - back to ``the disintegration of the institution of the two-parent family,'' and said his campaign is intended to restore those values, rather than about winning the White House.

``This can't be a campaign about winning power in government. It is a campaign about restoring responsibility,'' he said, criticizing candidates who ``think so much about winning that they don't care how they win.''

Keywords:
POLITICS

by CNB