Fred2Blue

To Jesse Helms, Virgil Goode, and any other former Democrats that I’m forgeting about. The exodus started with Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrat candidacy in 1948. It continued with George Wallace’s segregationist movement in the 60’s. And on and on it goes. But reason number #1 I’m not a Republican is Jesse Helms.

In 1996 I went down to North Carolina to attend college. At the time I didn’t really follow politics. The first night I’m there I went to a grocery store. As I’m standing in line a very nice woman hands me a brochure and says in a beautiful southern accent, “Y’all votin’ fer Jesse?” I smiled and put the pamphlet in my back pocket or somewhere else out of the way. I didn’t have a clue who Jesse was, I just knew I was tired and hungry.

So then I go out to the parking lot, but this time I’m greeted by a guy who’s missing a few teeth. He also hands me a brochure and mutters something under his breath. I don’t recall what he said exactly, but I remember at least one word that came up during his pitch…..and it started with the letter “N.” The pamphlet he gave me was for Jesse Helms for Senate, and had a confederate flag featured prominently on it. It was the same exact pamphlet that the nice lady had given me inside a few minutes earlier.

Soon I discovered that Helms wasn’t just a Republican in NC, he was the Republican in NC. I then assumed that these ignorant rednecks were just a product of the deep south, and that we didn’t put up with crap like that here in the commonwealth. It was then that I discovered that the Republican in Virginia was Gov. George Allen, a guy who, like Helms, opposed the MLK holiday and had a love affair with the confederate flag.

You also don’t have to be a political scholar to figure out that Ronald Reagan has been the overall most influential figure in the Republican party for the span of my entire life. Ronald Reagan, a guy who never would have made it to the White House without the support of one Jesse Helms.

Reagan biographer Craig Shirley:

If Helms accomplished nothing else in his life, he is the man most responsible for the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Had Helms not engineered Reagan’s stunning upset win in the North Carolina primary in 1976, Reagan would have dropped out and faded into oblivion. Reagan staged a furious comeback as a result, losing the nomination to Gerald Ford by only a handful of delegate votes. As a result, Reagan became the front-runner for the 1980 nomination. None of this would have been possible without Helms. One man simply decided to change history.

For several years one man was always at Helms’ side during his many victories. A guy named Charlie Black. Today, Black is the chief strategist for John McCain.

On that note, I’ll leave you with some of Jesse’s greatest hits: (h/t AMERICAblog)

As an aide to the 1950 Senate campaign of North Carolina Republican candidate Willis Smith, Helms reportedly helped create attack ads against Smith’s opponent, including one which read: “White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races.” Another ad featured photographs Helms himself had doctored to illustrate the allegation that Graham’s wife had danced with a black man. (The News and Observer, 8/26/01; The New Republic, 6/19/95; The Observer, 5/5/96; Hard Right: The Rise of Jesse Helms, by Ernest B. Furgurson, Norton, 1986)

The University of North Carolina was “the University of Negroes and Communists.” (Capital Times, 11/22/94) Black civil rights activists were “Communists and sex perverts.” (Copley News Service, 8/23/01)

Of civil rights protests Helms wrote, “The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that’s thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men’s rights.” (WRAL-TV commentary, 1963) He also wrote, “Crime rates and irresponsibility among Negroes are a fact of life which must be faced.” (New York Times, 2/8/81)

And the man ABC News now describes as a “conservative icon” (8/22/01) in 1993 sang “Dixie” in an elevator to Carol Moseley-Braun, the first African-American woman elected to the Senate, bragging, “I’m going to make her cry. I’m going to sing Dixie until she cries.” (Chicago Sun-Times, 8/5/93)

Over the years Helms has declared homosexuality “degenerate,” and homosexuals “weak, morally sick wretches.” (Newsweek, 12/5/94) In a tirade highlighting his routine opposition to AIDS research funding, Helms lashed out at the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS bill in 1988: “There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy.” ( States News Service, 5/17/88 )

Sen. Jesse Helms says the government should spend less money on people with AIDS because they got sick as a result of “deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct,” The New York Times reported Wednesday….

“We’ve got to have some common sense about a disease transmitted by people deliberately engaging in unnatural acts,” Helms told the Times.

UPDATE: Here’s Pres. Bush on the death of Jesse Helms:

Throughout his long public career, Senator Jesse Helms was a tireless advocate for the people of North Carolina, a stalwart defender of limited government and free enterprise, a fearless defender of a culture of life, and an unwavering champion of those struggling for liberty. Under his leadership, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was a powerful force for freedom. And today, from Central America to Central Europe and beyond, people remember: in the dark days when the forces of tyranny seemed on the rise, Jesse Helms took their side.

Jesse Helms was a kind, decent, and humble man and a passionate defender of what he called “the Miracle of America.” So it is fitting that this great patriot left us on the Fourth of July. He was once asked if he had any ambitions beyond the United States Senate. He replied: “The only thing I am running for is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Today, Jesse Helms has finished the race, and we pray he finds comfort in the arms of the loving God he strove to serve throughout his life.