A day after jumping into the Illinois Senate race, two-time presidential hopeful Alan Keyes ripped into Democratic rival Barack Obama, saying his views on abortion are “the slaveholder’s position.”

The conservative former diplomat said Obama’s vote against a bill that would have outlawed a form of late-term abortion denied unborn children of their equal rights. Both candidates — one an outspoken conservative and the other a favorite of party liberals — are black.

“I would still be picking cotton if the country’s moral principles had not been shaped by the Declaration of Independence,” Keyes said. He said Obama “has broken and rejected those principles — he has taken the slaveholder’s position.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5654128/