STILL wrong about The Great One

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It takes a lot of chutzpah to beat on and smear someone after they’re dead and gone.  They can’t exactly write a rebuttal, now can they?

.We’re seeing it today with the late senator Lindsey Graham.  We’ve been seeing it with our late senator Jesse Helms.  Long after he’s passed, Helms is living rent-free in the few heads still left in The N&O’s money-bleeding newsroom.

Like Roy Cooper, Jesse Helms went undefeated (one term Raleigh city council, five US Senate terms) in elections.    . delivered The N&O’s *beloved* Jim Hunt the only defeat of his political career.

Back to money-bleeding.  Things are apparently so bad at The N&O they had to close their Washington office and bring their reporter back home to Raleigh.  In fact – here is said reporter right now, still getting it wrong: .

[…] But Hudson told supporters in Kinston that the election isn’t over. He compared Whatley to former Sen. Jesse Helms, a controversial Republican in state politics who fought against desegregation.[…]
So, being hated by the trolls in The N&O newsroom makes you ‘controversial’?  Helms was not in office when the civil rights battle was going on.  As a commentator for WRAL, he railed against what he viewed as heavy-handed tactics employed by the federal government.
Joe Biden waged war on forced busing.  I never saw The N&O getting fussy about that.  Toooo inconvenient.  (And don’t get us started on N&O founder Josephus Daniels ….) 
I spent a few years working in Washington for Helms.  During that time, I met and got to know civil rights legend James Meredith – who helped desegregate Ol’ Miss.   *Of course, only a vile bigot would hire a beloved civil rights legend.*

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Helms had a record of fighting bureaucratic excess and out-of-control spending.  Thanks to his knowledge and skill with the Senate rules, he tied up and helped kill a lot of bad stuff that would have been really bad for the country.

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MORE:
[…] “The great Jesse Helms never led a poll, not once in 30 years, but he was elected by this state over and over because he fought for us,” Hudson said. “And it’s the same thing for Michael Whatley. The media wants you to think it’s over, we’ve got no shot. They want you to stay home but we’re not going to let them fool us, are we? We’re going to send Michael Whatley to the United States Senate.” […]
Richard Hudson is wrong on TWO counts here.  First, comparing Michael Whatley to Jesse Helms is like comparing Whatley to any of The Founding Fathers.

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* It just doesn’t work. On sooooo many levels.*

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Second, Hudson is likely not aware of ONE polling service that was reportedly right-on-the-money for every Helms race.  It was something called The Long Poll – based in Greensboro.   While everyone else was showing Helms vulnerable or down, the folks at the Long Poll showed otherwise. 

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Helms’s then-chief-of-staff, the late Clint Fuller, told me Long had picked 1972, 1978 and 1984 perfectly.   I know they sure got 1990 right.

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It’s been 36 years since I last saw anything from them. So, I am not sure if they’re even still around.

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I was in DC with Helms during the 1990 race against Harvey Gantt.  We were instructed to be on the lookout from any communication from the folks at The Long Poll.  It was viewed as more important than a communication from then-president George H.W. Bush.

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I can imagine the reluctance to tell a pollster you were for Jesse Helms.  Who wants to get outrageously and unfairly smeared as a ‘vile bigot’?

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Every day, we see evidence of how violent the left gets if you disagree with them.  Just imagine what might happen to your house or car  if either were in close proximity to a Helms campaign sign or bumper sticker.

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Jesse Helms and Ronald Reagan are primarily responsible for getting eastern North Carolina Democrats to realize it was OK to vote Republican.  The N&O – for what little it’s still worth – is primarily responsible for the death of print news.

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