Love him or hate him. You always knew where he stood on an issue. A rare thing for politicians.

Jesse Helms was definitely one of the greatest Senators of our time. He demonstrated something that I wish our present Republicans in Congress had. Jesse Helms had strong solid backbone. He stood his ground reguardless of popular opinion. Which I certainly would like to see more of today.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080705/ap_on_go_co/helms_remembered

quote:

Originally posted by Lighteningrodd:
Jesse Helms was definitely one of the greatest Senators of our time.

!!! I have to know, please tell me, why you think this. He was an ignorant white racist plain and simple.

He opposed civil rights, was in opposition to academic research, the arts, funding for HIV treatment and research, efforts to improve health care domestically and internationally, foreign aid, he was a major fan of Augusto Pinochet, and a champion of the tobacco industry my god the man was a world-class @#%$*&%.

The world will be a better place when all the original unreconstructed Dixiecrats have been shown their seats in hell.

But my original question - what great things did this man do?

Having a 'strong solid backbone' in pursuit of an obnoxious, hateful agenda, I don't see where that's a good quality.

As far as standing his ground regardless of popular opinion, when he formed his opinions, they were the popular opinion - that's how he was elected. He just never changed with the times like the rest of America.

I stand by what I said about Jesse Helms. Do I agree with everything he took a stand on. No One issue I disageed was medical marijuana.

I would suggest you take a look at his positions & why he felt as he did. I admire him for the fact he didn't change for the sake of change. Just because certain opinions were popular, that don't mean they are good or right. You mention his elections. Take a look at the link I posted, you will find, he never ran away with an election. He stood his ground winning by narrow margins. In other words he didn't just make speeches telling the voters what they wanted to hear. He told them how he felt on issues, they vote for him, fine, if not, then vote for the other guy. We need more elected officials like him. Not those pandering to the crowds.

quote:

Take a look at the link I posted, you will find, he never ran away with an election. He stood his ground winning by narrow margins. In other words he didn't just make speeches telling the voters what they wanted to hear.

I don't know much about the guy, but didn't he win by narrow margins more because he made speeches that only one particular section of his constituency wanted to hear - and there were just enough of them to swing it for him?

'From the beginning, Helms was schooled in the political device of using race to propel white conservatives to the polls...

...On election day, Helms won 63% of the white vote, according to the Voters Education Project, a nonprofit advocacy group in Atlanta. Hunt got nearly 99% of the black vote, but the turnout -- 61% of the state's blacks registered -- was not enough to overcome Helms' appeal in rural eastern North Carolina...' latimes

Below from http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16094.html -

The WaPo’s David Broder wrote a column in August 2001, shortly after Helms announced he would not seek re-election. Broder, who would hardly qualify as a reflexive liberal ideologue, did a fine job explaining exactly what made Helms politically significant, and precisely why he’ll be remembered.

What really sets Jesse Helms apart is that he is the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country — a title that one hopes will now be permanently retired. A few editorials and columns came close to saying that. But the squeamishness of much of the press in characterizing Helms for what he is suggests an unwillingness to confront the reality of race in our national life. […]

What is unique about Helms — and from my viewpoint, unforgivable — is his willingness to pick at the scab of the great wound of American history, the legacy of slavery and segregation, and to inflame racial resentment against African Americans.

Many of the accounts of Helms’s retirement linked him with another prospective retiree, Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Both these Senate veterans switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party when the Democrats began pressing for civil rights legislation in the 1960s. But there is a great difference between them. Thurmond, who holds the record for the longest anti-civil rights filibuster, accepted change. For three decades he has treated African Americans and black institutions as respectfully as he treats all his other constituents.

To the best of my knowledge, Helms has never done what the late George Wallace did well before his death — recant and apologize for his use of racial issues. And that use was blatant.

In 1984, when Helms faced his toughest opponent in Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt, the late Bill Peterson, one of the most evenhanded reporters I have ever known, summed up what “some said was the meanest Senate campaign in history.”

“Racial epithets and standing in school doors are no longer fashionable,” Peterson wrote, “but 1984 proved that the ugly politics of race are alive and well. Helms is their master.”

A year before the election, when public polls showed Helms trailing by 20 points, he launched a Senate filibuster against the bill making the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. a national holiday. Thurmond and the Senate majority were on the other side, but the next poll showed Helms had halved his deficit.

All year, Peterson reported, “Helms campaign literature sounded a drumbeat of warnings about black voter-registration drives…. On election eve, he accused Hunt of being supported by ‘homosexuals, the labor union bosses and the crooks’ and said he feared a large ‘bloc vote.’ What did he mean? ‘The black vote,’ Helms said.” He won, 52 percent to 48 percent.

In 1990, locked in a tight race with an African American Democrat, former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt, Helms aired a final-week TV ad that showed a pair of white hands crumpling a rejection letter, while an announcer said, “You needed that job and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota.” Once again, he pulled through.

That is not a history to be sanitized.

At the risk of sounding heartless, the same is true on the day of Helms’ death.
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We all have our own heroes, people who lived their lives in a way that we admired and respected. That Helms did some good cannot be denied. That he was a good man is unlikely ever to be accepted by the majority.