Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

I feel I’m taking the standard liberal line when I say that I’m quite sad for Jesse Helms’ family about his passing, but I also thought the day he left the Senate was one of the happier days of my poliitcal life. He was, unquestionably, the most sucessful openly racist politician in a time when blatant racism was supposed to be a disqualifer from participation in public life. Not only did he hold bigoted views towards black people, he also was responsible for the HIV ban, had an enduring hate for multilateral institutions and a certain fondness for reactionary right-wing governments abroad. He was, in short, the apothoseosis of everything wrong about Republicans from 1964 onwward.

But he was also a relic. In the past few years, there’s been a flourishing of commentary among liberals about how Republicans used white racism (or resentment, if you want to be nicer about it) to maintain political dominance from 1968 to 1992. Paul Krugman’s Conscience of a Liberal and, to a lesser extent, Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland, are good examples of this trend. The weird part about this commentary is that it comes as the very same time that mainy powerful Republicans are openly trying to overcome this legacy.

In 2000, Bush became the first Republican to win the White House since Eisenhower who didn’t rely on some implicit fear of black people/crime/urban disorder to win support. He didn’t give any speeches in Philadelphia, MIssissippi, ran no Willie Horton ads and even made a point of reaching out to black and Hispanic voters. Ken Mehlman even made a public apology to african americans for the GOP legacy on race. Karl Rove had a grand political strategy that involved shaving off some blacks and lots of Latinos from the Democratic coalition. Of course, by 2004, there was plenty of fear-mongering as well as reliance on homophobia to whip up votes, but it would be dishonest to ignore the progress the GOP made since 2000. This was also the period when open racism (against black people) finally became a disqualifier for being a powerful Republican. Trent Lott was forced out of his minority leadership, while Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms both retired.

So why are so many mainstream Republican and conservative figures and organizations rushing to defend and praise Helms? The core of the Republicans agenda these days (terrorism and social issues) isn’t the same mix (crime, urban disorder, states rights) that invited a reaching out to  anti-black racists. And while I agree with Mark Schmitt that Republicans are banking on a certain type of white/”American” identity politics these days, it’s still markedly different from the subtle and sometimes not so subtle race baiting of Nixon, Reagan, Helms et al. Part of it is quite easy to explain: you simply don’t let your opponents define your political movement in the worst possible terms. But still, Jesse Helms is not very relevant to what the GOP is doing today, and if the conservative movement ever wants to shake its reputation for racism, a full throated denunciation of the most openly racist Republican of the late 20th century would be a good place to start.

PS – This would be a good oppurtunity to link to David Weigel’s excellent essay on Helms. The crucial point Weigel makes is that Helms wasn’t a very effective politician – North Carolinians didn’t like him for bringing home pork or any traditional legislative achievements, they liked him because he hated liberals and liberals hated him. He really was the purest form of conservative resentment that made it into real politics.