I remember hearing in the hours just before the last Republican debate in Iowa that Alan Keyes, who had (to be fair to him) participated in the NAACP-sponsored forum that most of the top Republicans skipped, had somehow crossed the 1% barrier in a Des Moines Register poll, and so qualified for a podium (or as Keyes' website puts it, "[f]or the first time, all nine major candidates will share the stage.")
Turns out things aren't so simple as that. In what is on so many levels the most compelling bit of campaign-trail reportage to come out of this election cycle so far, Byron York notes that in addition to the 1% hurdle and a couple of other conditions that the Keyes campaign has met, there is a further condition for candidates to take part in the DMR debate — that they have at least one paid staffer in Iowa — and it's not at all clear from Keyes' protestations to York that he has even one staffer. (On the other hand, he could be pulling a reverse Saddam Hussein — acting like he doesn't have the goods when he really does, the better to stoke his resentment of the media and non-followers of his generally.) Check out this exchange among York, Keyes, and an unnamed reporter, below the fold.
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