The line from Helms to Trump

by | Aug 17, 2022 | Editor's Blog | 10 comments

Last night, Liz Cheney lost her primary to Trump-backed Republican Harriet Hageman. Hageman is typical of a lot of Republicans. She supported Cheney for years and, according the Washington Post, she “opposed Trump, calling him ‘racist and xenophobic’” in 2016. Now, she’s worshipping at the Altar of Trump.

Of course, Hageman was right in 2016. And Donald Trump certainly hasn’t changed since then. It’s Hageman and the whole mainstream wing of the GOP that has abandoned Buckley conservatism for Trump’s reactionary politics. 

So what happened to the Republican Party? David French, a conservative writer who left the GOP because of Trump, says that Republicans blame Democrats. He summarizes part of their argument as, “We reject the old rules of behavior. The left punches hard. We’ll punch harder. We tried nominating ‘good’ people—like Mitt—and the left painted them as racist and misogynist. We didn’t make the new rules, but we’ll play by those rules, and the new rules tell us to fight fire with fire.”

I respect French and read him regularly, but that’s bullshit. Maybe that excuse works for people who live where politics is more tame, but I’m from North Carolina. I grew up watching Jesse Helms and his Congressional Club using blatant racism and dog whistles to attract the segregationists and reactionaries into the Republican Party. His famous “Hands” ad used race to divide the state, saying, “You needed that job, but it went to a minority.” As a Senator, he ridiculed gay people and opposed the Martin Luther King holiday because he claimed King was a communist. Before he was a candidate, Helms defended segregation as a commentator on WRAL and before that he was an operative in Willis Smith’s campaign for U.S. Senate that smeared UNC President Frank Porter Graham for being too close to African Americans. 

In 1988, then-vice President George H. W. Bush smeared Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis with the infamous Willie Horton ad. The ad stoked racial fears and played on Black stereotypes. Bush strategist Lee Atwater said, “If I can make Willie Horton a household name, we’ll win the election.” Atwater repudiated the ad on his death bed, but most Republicans never have. 

In 2008, Republicans in North Carolina ran an ad attacking Barack Obama that was so racist that Republican Presidential nominee John McCain called for the party to take it down. The party refused. That same election, incumbent Senator Elizabeth Dole accused her opponent, Kay Hagan, of being “godless.” 

So the idea that Republicans needed Trump as an attack dog to fend off vicious attacks from the left is laughable. Republicans have bludgeoning Democrats, using ugly ads to divide people along racial lines for decades. Trump just quit using dog whistles and outright summoned the modern equivalent the Ku Klux Klan to join the GOP. He praises neo-Nazis, Proud Boys, and Oath Keepers as a counter force to Antifa and BLM, imaginary threats to the republic that justify his encouragement of violence and insurrection.

No, the people who rejected Liz Cheney and embraced Donald Trump have been in the Republican Party for decades and they’ve been a force in America since its beginning. Bill Buckley-type Republicans, like French, have lived in denial about them for as long as they’ve been part of the GOP. They were the ugly underbelly of the party that no one wanted to acknowledge. They are descendants of the White supremacists who ended democracy in the South at the turn of the 20th century. They were Democrats back then, but today are solidly Republican. And, now, they control the GOP.

The people who have changed are the Harriet Hageman’s of world. They are people who know better but cherish power more than principles. They know that Trump is a liar and a conman. They know that the January 6 insurrection threatens our democracy and, yet, they have joined the mob. 

The Liz Cheneys, Mitt Romneys, and Adam Kinzingers of the GOP are certainly heroes for standing up to Trump and their party. It takes courage to stand in opposition to people with whom you’ve worked your entire political career. But they are also not blameless for where the GOP is today. The forces that surround and support Trump have been part of the party for generations and they ignored the racism and authoritarianism as long as it was in the background and not a threat to them. 

They stayed silent as the illiberal forces grew within the party. They rationalized that the perceived sins of the mainstream media justified Fox News and talk radio conditioning a large segment of their base to believe liars and reject facts. They supported Mitch McConnell as he rejected compromise as a governing principle and replaced it with obstructionism. 

Democrats certainly have their flaws and the left in this country has some illiberal tendencies of its own, but the party is still controlled by people who believe in the system of democracy and the principle of compromise. Republicans today are in thrall of authoritarian forces embodied by Donald Trump. 

While Trump may be their leader, the illiberal reactionaries who underpin him have been part of our political landscape forever. They were most recently beaten down in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, but they never went away. They’ve risen to power because of the encouragement of Donald Trump and willful neglect of otherwise mainstream Republicans. After Cheney’s defeat, it’s clear that the former Reagan Republicans cannot save their party.

10 Comments

  1. cocodog

    George Conway wrote a satire of Trump’s various responses to the Feds finding the originals of classified documents at his private golf course in Fl. He mocked Trump by using every known excuse or deception routinely disseminated by MAGA Republicans of which none include any reference to personal error. It is really humorist reading and worthy of remembering as Trump and his little band of marry men are shipped off to club Fed. The article appears in the Washington Post.

  2. Jim Stewart

    “Democrats certainly have their flaws and the left in this country has some illiberal tendencies of its own, but the party is still controlled by people who believe in the system of democracy and the principle of compromise.”

    I would add that they’re not shamelessly dishonest. There was a time not long ago when if a politician was called out for saying something that objectively wasn’t true, they’d retract and say they “misspoke” or were “misinformed.” The Democrats by in large still do this. But the Republicans double down on dishonesty. They’ve learned that their base either doesn’t know (brainwashing), simply doesn’t care, or will champion it in the name of owning the Libs. I mean, so of the stuff they say is blatant batshit, and much is beyond nasty and filled with dog whistles (accusations of ‘grooming’ and such).
    Decorum and honestly have become meaningless to MAGA Republicans, but Democrats rarely cross those lines. But they know their base won’t tolerate it. And I’m coming to believe close to 2/3rds of Independents side with the Dems on these traditional principles.

    But the Republicans are headed for an existential reckoning. The country gets younger and less white every day. Millennials and Zoomers vote for Dems 2 to 1, and the older GOP base is dying off.
    Republicans clearly see this, which is why they amp up the rhetoric and social warring to squeeze turnout higher and higher (I think they’ve hit their ceiling). It’s why they suppress the vote. But these tactics will only work for so long before they’re overwhelmed by the tide of Demographic change.
    Their current plan appears to hinge on seizing control through the State Legislature Doctrine (https://electionlawblog.org/?p=129023). If that works, they will give themselves the permanent majority. If it fails, they will have to leave MAGA behind and change their ways, or become the permanent minority.

  3. Mike Leonard

    Millions of us knew that when Putin’s puppet was installed in the White House he had no intention of ever leaving it. That’s why he tried to overthrow democracy. Putin is still laughing as he watches video of the attack on the Capitol.

    • Richard Bircher

      Jesse was the first thing I saw on tv when we moved to nc in 1964. It took me a while to realize that he was saying nigras, not what I thought he was saying

  4. Jane Koenig

    It’s so sad! What do you think about Andrew Yang’s efforts to expand our 2-Party system to 3, or as many as 6 legitimate parties?

    • cocodog

      Multiple political parties tend to create problems. They take away votes from the folks trying preserve democracy and individual rights. Multiple parties exist in Europe and South American. All they manage to create is confusion. The two-party system, if everybody plays by the rules, allows clear and concise choices.

  5. Rick Gunter

    I knew Jesse Helms fairly well. As a young political reporter in Asheville, I wrote about his first campaign for the U.S. Senate in 1972. He even appointed a relative of mine to the U.S. Naval Academy. (He graduated, too!)
    As to Mr. Trump, he did not begin the current madness of the former GOP that is now a cult. He revealed it. The white nationalism, conspiracy theories, lies, well, they are what the Cult of Trump wants to be. It is beyond sadness.
    As to Cheney, she is a heroic figure. Her heroism is not really diminished by her earlier actions. In politics, as in life, it is not how you start out but how you end up.
    I know of no other political leader close to Liz Cheney. She literally was willing to sacrifice her seat for her principles.
    At the moment, I can only think of one other political figure in my lifetime who did what Cheney just did. The situation is not quite the same. The outcome is, howver, close to being similar to Cheney’s. He is forgotten now, but U.S Sen. Earle Clements, D-KY, was LBJ’s assistant majority leader back in the day. Clements loved Johnson and would do anything for him. Social Security disability was coming up for a vote. A vote-counter with no peer, LBJ knew that he needed Clements vote to pass the legislation. Clements was up for re-election in Kentudky, where doctors were a powerful lobby and opposed the disability bill. Clements knew that if he voted for the bill, he likely would be defeated for re-election. The bill came up for a vote. Earle Clements, not only voted for it, but he did the right thing by doing so. He was defeated for re-election.
    There are a handful of other examples similar to the ‘Clements’ deed in recent politics. But I always think of him when the subject of political courage arises.
    I doubt that I would agree on much with Liz Cheney. But i agree with her stand on Trump. She always will be a hero of mine. If she does not win the Profile in Courage Award given by the JFK School of Government at Harvard, well, they would end the award.

  6. Susan

    Well said. I could see the white supremacy element in the GOP, but your historical narrative expresses it perfectly. I remember Jesse Helms.

  7. Joe Beamish

    Perfectly on point! I just hate it when I hear talking heads in the media ponder how Trump became the de facto leader of the republican party. He has just removed any pretense that has always existed with conservatism.

    • Matthew Fagin

      The Democrat Party who used to stand for middle class workers seems to have vanished, replaced by overly leftist elements.
      Also, let’s not forget LBJ’s racist comments while trying to pass the Great Society.

Related Posts

GET UPDATES

Get the latest posts from PoliticsNC delivered right to your inbox!

You have Successfully Subscribed!