Former Senator Jesse Helms has died

[Mrs.JockEwing]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25534265/

WASHINGTON - "Compromise, hell!" Jesse Helms screamed in a 1959 editorial that captured what would become the legacy of his Senate career and his place in the conservative movement.

Jesse Helms mostly was a polarizer, not a compromiser. He would rather win elections by a razor's edge than change his conservative positions.

Many of his colleagues in the congenial Senate "club" sought compromises on the toughest social issues. Jesse Helms wouldn't play along. He relished his nickname as "Senator No," the man who knew the Senate rules so well that he blocked legislation that violated his right-wing principles and nominees he couldn't stomach.

He was often gentlemanly, though. But not negotiable.

With a big smile, he proudly held up a "Senator No" T-shirt for the cameras.

No to civil rights. No to abortion. No to communism. No to the United Nations. No to gay rights. No to arts funding with nakedness. No to school busing. No to the U.S. giving up the Panama Canal. No to a nuclear arms reduction treaty called Salt II.

This was a man who clearly wasn't into political triangulation.

Oddly, Helms, who died on the Fourth of July at age 86, did make a few changes that moderated his image at the end of his 30-year Senate career — but they seem now more like footnotes to the Helms best known as a latter-20th century magnet for attack by liberals.

Helms' "compromise, hell!" stance is emblematic of an era that will be judged as harshly partisan. He helped pave way to the polarization that plagues the country — and both parties — to this day.

The man who spent his life fighting the left and decrying homosexuality told Christian activists in his last year in the Senate that he'd joined the fight against the worldwide AIDS epidemic. And when he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a friendship bloomed with Madeleine Albright, the Clinton administration Secretary of State.

This didn't necessarily mean that the brittle North Carolinian had mellowed. It just made the man whose path always turned right a little more complex, not so easy to read.

"He was one of the most conservative senators but he wasn't the leader of conservatives in the Senate. He was a leader of conservatives outside the Senate," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. But Sabato said Helms' positions would be a major problem today for a GOP that is perceived by many as moving too far to the right.

'Willing to lose'
There's no better indication of Helms' unwillingness to compromise than his willingness to lose elections. His winning percentages in his five Senate terms — from 1972 to 1996 — were 54, 55, 52, 53 and 52. Sabato said Helms may well have lost if he had run again in 2002.

A contemporary in the Senate, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, preceded Helms as the standard-bearer for civil rights opponents. But when Thurmond was threatened with political extinction — winning only 56 percent of the vote in 1978 — he began moderating his views and won 67 and 64 percent of the vote in the next two elections.

Helms "was happily willing to lose," Sabato said. "He was willing to lose gloriously rather than abandon his views and principles."

As a television commentator before running for the Senate, Helms said, "Dr. (Martin Luther) King's outfit ... is heavily laden at the top with leaders of proven records of communism, socialism and sex perversion, as well as other curious behavior." He called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress."

"Senator Helms certainly was no bigot," Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said Friday. "He was a man however not into subtlety. You know what he thought about a particular issue. You certainly knew because he was not into the kind of nuance and subtlety that so often divides American politicians."

Helms' greatest political feat was not in the Senate, but in Republican politics. In 1976, he supported Ronald Reagan in the North Carolina primary — not only rescuing Reagan's political career but positioning Reagan for his successful run four years later.

Still, some of his antics in the Senate were legendary.

He alone stopped the nomination of a Republican, then-Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, as ambassador to Mexico because Weld supported medical use of marijuana, abortion rights and gay rights.

In the debate over reauthorizing a domestic AIDS program, Helms tried but failed to prohibit any money from being used to promote homosexuality.

He repeatedly tried to kill the National Endowment for the Arts, but didn't succeed. He believed the agency funded pornography.

In blocking renewal of a health care program for AIDS victims in 1995, Helms railed that the disease was the result of "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct."

In his 2005 World AIDS Day Appeal, though, Helms wrote, "Each of us, all of our churches, must do something. We dare not avert our eyes. In the name of Christ, for the sake of his kingdom, please help."

Can't say I can mourn the man. While I agree him him communism is wrong he was anti-minority, anti-gay, anti-woman, and anti-child.

[Sonya in Tx]

He was a card carrying racist, and I'm waiting for his black love child to come forward ala Strom Thurmond's hypocrite a$$.

[SnarkyOracle!]

He was a card carrying racist, and I'm waiting for his black love child to come forward ala Strom Thurmond's hypocrite a$$.

Really.

[Sonya in Tx]

Really.

Just a guess Marky. I don't know if Jesse has any love child at all.

Strom Thurmond was a rabid segregationist and racist of the worst kind. He was barely gone a week, and the news surfaces that he had a love child with his black maid.

[Darius]

The world is a better place without him. I for one will not miss him.

[Mickey Fairgate]

I won't miss Jesse Helms, I wasn't even sad to hear of his passing, .

[Jack]

"anti-child"



now that was classic

[Mrs.JockEwing]

Reasons why Jesse Helms was anti-child:
He refused to have anything to do with Ryan White, who contracted AIDS through no fault of his own. He wouldn't even speak to Ryan mother
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_White_Care_Act
Voted against school lunch programs

[Jack]

Reasons why Jesse Helms was anti-child:
He refused to have anything to do with Ryan White, who contracted AIDS through no fault of his own. He wouldn't even speak to Ryan mother
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_White_Care_Act
Voted against school lunch programs

anti child lmao

[Mrs.JockEwing]

Any one who would vote against the school lunch program funding so poor kids can have a decent meal is anti-child in my book, and since Helms did that he is anti-child.

He also hated children who had AIDS too.

[Jack]

anti-child

was he anti-cat too?

[Sid Fairgate]

Helms was "bitterly opposed to federal financing of AIDS research and treatment".[26] Opposing the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS bill in 1988, Helms stated, "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy."[27] When Ryan White died in 1990, his mother went to Congress to speak to politicians on behalf of people with AIDS. She spoke to 23 representatives: Helms refused to speak to her even when she was alone with him in an elevator.[28] Despite opposition by Helms, the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Care (CARE) Act passed in 1990.

Whether or not Helms was "anti-child," there is no doubt he was certainly ignorant on several issues. The fact that he wouldn't even speak to this child's mother just goes to show what a douche bag he was.

The most stubborn, unflinching politicians are always the most dangerous. And it doesn't matter if they are Democrat or Republican. You have no business being in politics if you are not at least interested in hearing both sides. It also helps to be human.

[Jack]

Whether or not Helms was "anti-child," there is no doubt he was certainly ignorant on several issues. The fact that he wouldn't even speak to this child's mother just goes to show what a douche bag he was.

The most stubborn, unflinching politicians are always the most dangerous. And it doesn't matter if they are Democrat or Republican. You have no business being in politics if you are not at least interested in hearing both sides. It also helps to be human.

like Ron Paul for example

[Jack]

Any one who would vote against the school lunch program funding so poor kids can have a decent meal is anti-child in my book, and since Helms did that he is anti-child.

He also hated children who had AIDS too.

are you "anti-child" if you support abortion?

[CarlD]

and just think, he was once a Democrat with these views !!!! Strange.

[Sid Fairgate]

like Ron Paul for example

Paul's views are at least shaped by the Constitution, not his own personal ideals. I believe Paul is more diplomatic than Helms was, and if he disagreed with another politician's ideas, he could use the Constitution to back up why he disagreed.

Helms, on the other hand, strikes me as the type of guy that wouldn't even consider hearing the other side out because he was too stubborn in his own beliefs. For example, Helms not supporting AIDS research because of his belief that AIDS could only be contracted through sodomy was based solely on his own personal views.

[Mrs.JockEwing]

are you "anti-child" if you support abortion?

Once again Jack knows he lost this debate so he tries to change the subject.

[Jack]

Once again Jack knows he lost this debate so he tries to change the subject.

ROFLMAO

the subject is what is "anti-child"


Jock .... if you support abortion ... are you "anti-child" ?

[CarlD]

Paul's views are at least shaped by the Constitution, not his own personal ideals. I believe Paul is more diplomatic than Helms was, and if he disagreed with another politician's ideas, he could use the Constitution to back up why he disagreed.

Helms, on the other hand, strikes me as the type of guy that wouldn't even consider hearing the other side out because he was too stubborn in his own beliefs. For example, Helms not supporting AIDS research because of his belief that AIDS could only be contracted through sodomy was based solely on his own personal views.

Old folks stuck in their ways, imagine that.

[Sid Fairgate]

Old folks stuck in their ways, imagine that.

Yes, but Helms seemed like the overly old fashioned type of guy to me. You know, the type that views gays as being diseased and AIDS as a gay-only disease? Not to mention the fact that, by his own accord, he opposed civil rights. He didn't want black folks to meddle in what he called "The Southern way of life."

Somebody should have told this guy that Archie Bunker is only funny when there is a Meathead to counter everything he says. Otherwise, this mentality is quite disturbing.