Yes, it’s appropriate to challenge him. It’s not appropriate to accuse him, which is what the OP and RM have done.
While I certainly didn’t like Kiwisei Mifume hugging and endorsing Louis Farrakhan when he was the head of the Congressional Black caucus, I didn’t think he was endorsing Farrakhan’s bigotry or doing so BECAUSE of Farrakhan’s bigotry.
It’s not like somebody made him go. The RNC chooses to have a Helms lecture and Cruz chose to go, which ought to raise the question of why it’s politically acceptable for a sitting Republican senator to praise people like Helms. Republican officials sometimes wonder why they struggle to get votes from minorities and they don’t seem to put two and two together. Yes, Washington owned slaves and Lincoln may have looked down on black people. You know what? They died more than a century ago. Two centuries in the case of Washington. Jesse Helms was in the senate until 2003, and Republicans still embrace this part of their history. The Democrats had Robert Byrd until recently, but when people spoke positively about him, they praised him for rejecting the Klan, not for maintaining a consistent philosophy from his youth to the present day.
I know the cause of gay rights has progressed a lot in the last decade, but let’s not pretend nobody understood that it was OK to demonize and discriminate against gay people in 2003. Even in his time, the kinds of things Helms said about gays were recognized as disgusting - just not by the people who voted for him and his allies in Congress. It goes without saying that people who praise Lincoln and Washington reject their views on black people, but Cruz shares Helms’ disdain for the Voting Rights Act, for example. And just a couple of weeks after Republicans waved their hands at the March on Washington anniversary and while they push things like voter ID that are seen as targeting minorities, Cruz goes out to praise that guy (and a guy who filibustered the MLK Day bill). So it’s hard to say '‘he was talking about this part of Helms’ legacy and not that part."
This is very similar to the Trent Lott thing, of course, except that Trent Lott paid a price for it and Cruz probably won’t. As a reminder, Lott said America would’ve been better off if Strom Thurmond, who was running on a segregationist platform, had been elected president in 1948.
I apologize and please let me back step. Implied was improper. What was believed to be implied should have been the way I worded it.
The problem with “implying” something is that it is incredibly person-specific. If you go to your friend and call him a meat-head (in even a straight tone) he’ll take it as a joke. If you go to a random stranger in a parking lot and call him a meat-head, you’d probably take a punch to the gut. It was implied that it was a joke in both cases, but one person took it incredibly differently. Why?
Because implication is a personal-level addition to speech. It changes based on who you are talking to and even what sort of mood that person is in. In a crowd setting, your implications can only come from something universally known to that crowd, which is all but impossible to televised speeches.
Thus, if you read someone’s review of a speech that says “he implied x!” that’s what was taken away by that one person. But it’s their value addition to the speech. Is the person reviewing a topic from a neutral position? Opposing position? Supporting position? That changes their view of the implications the speaker imparted.
All that being said, do you feel like the crowd clapped based on Helm’s history of racism or based upon the preceding statements made within that speech? This one is harder and usually requires being there or trusting the reports of what came out of the speech’s audience.
I don’t think there’s much of a difference between a challenge and accusation, in this case- they both give him room and a chance to clarify what he meant. I think in that statement he endorsed white supremacy in the Senate (or at the very least was accepting of white supremacy in the Senate), but it may have been unintentional. An accusation and a challenge are both appropriate, in my view, whether the endorsement/acceptance was intentional or not. And I look forward to reading what Cruz has to say about it.
I assume a crowd at the Jesse Helms center endorses the majority of what Jesse Helms did and supported.
And, of course, Ted Cruz needs such people in the same way Kweisi Mifume needed people who believed what Louis Farrakhan believed. The way you get the allegiance of such people without outright endorsing their positions is to say things like what Ted Cruz said.
Honestly: I think every politician should speak their mind like Jessie Helms. That being said, I disagree with 90% of his actions and policies. It also certainly doesn’t mean that I want everyone in Congress to start whipping minorities and forcing homosexuals to pray away the gay.
Even if the speaking their mind is disgusting, what’s more useful:
A) I hate queermos.
B) We are certainly not opposed to the idea of gays.
A, to me, says “Wow. We need to dump him like a bad habit.” - He spoke his mind and I can say that he doesn’t sit well with me.
B, to me, says “Wow, we need to dump him like a bomb detonating in 10 seconds.” - He didn’t speak his mind, he tried to hind behind a “we” (most likely a political party) and instead of just stating something that he will work for shows that he will go whatever way the party goes in the future, even if “They have no problem with gays” means “Gays are banned forever in SB 194.”
I will say that I’d like to read a little more about what Cruz actually said about Helms. His entire speech is online but I think it’s something like 90 minutes. The criticism of Helms is not just that he supported racist policies and used race-baiting ads, by the way - since we know a lot of people reject those kinds of arguments by implication - it’s about him personally. This story about Helms and Senator Carol Mosley Braun is horrifying.
Does anyone else find it more than a little ironic for the Republicans to be praising free speakers among them, fast on the heals of an internal call to “Stop being the party of stupid!” I seem to recall some televangelist, last election cycle, calling on pro life homophobes to not make their candidates own their actual views publicly so as to increase their chances of election. Hope I’m remembering correctly!
Well I find it ironic, anyway.
Yes, there are some Republican strategists who have urged candidates to pipe down a little on women’s issues and maybe gay rights issues so they don’t blow a campaign like Todd Akin did. To be fair, Cruz is not one of the people saying those things- so for him there’s no contradiction. He wants Republicans to take these hardline conservative stances and broadcast them far and wide because that’s what works for him and he thinks they’ll win more elections that way. Bobby Jindal was the one who urged Republicans not to be the stupid party, but the message didn’t take and I think he’s abandoned it.
Cruz is just trying to keep his name in the news. He knows that anyone to the left of Michelle Bachmann is not going to vote for him in the 2016 primaries, so his job is to continually remind the rightest of the right that he is one of them. If he has to blow on his dog whistle so hard that we can all hear the implied racism, he isn’t the least concerned. The base he is aiming for is uncomfortable with black citizenship anyway.
Racism was the dominating trait of Helms and not a mere footnote to his character the way Lincoln’s belief in black inferiority was. You simply cannot separate praise for Helms without simultaneously endorsing his racism.
AIUI, he always worked hard for his consituents and was sincerely dedicated to their interests as he understood them. I’m sure even a black could write him and get help with something, so long as it was not something contrary to Helms’ principles, such as they were.
I think Cruz left himself enough lawyerly wiggle room to talk his way out of accusations of supporting Helms’ racism while simultaneously coming across as doing exactly that to the people in the audience who would be pleased by it.
This probably says more about the GOP. If you want to be ‘in’, if you want to get attention and prominence, you have to support a whole constellation ideas that are in retrograde. A few decades ago, racism, homophobia, religious fundamentalism in government and so on were winners (to a point anyway). The more fuel you threw on those fires, the more votes you could get and the longer you could stay in office.
Now, well, those ideas are the ‘heritage’ of the GOP. One can’t be a GOP candidate and go around dissing the history of the GOP. No, you’ve got to stress how great it is, even though nowadays that makes a guy come across like a tool. Ted Cruz himself isn’t saying ‘all those crazy things’, he’s dancing around it because even proponents of ‘those crazy things’ realize that they aren’t acceptable. Garsh, if only the views of the GOP base could be freely uttered in public, in only all that hatefulness were so mainstream that 100 representatives declaring them could get elected, why then this party would really have a future…
I’m a solidly right-wing Republican who generally rolls his eyes when liberals make accusations of racism… but who thinks Jesse Helms WAS a genuine racist.
I STILL think that, in some regards, the Republicans could use more people with some of Helms’ qualities.
Read this story for an idea of what I mean.
If you didn’t care to follow the link, essentially here’s what you’d have read: The New York Times published an editorial trashing Jesse Helms as an evil racist. One of Helms’ aides thought that was grossly unfair, and wrote a rebuttal to send to the Times. Before mailing it, he thought he should clear it with his boss, so he showed the letter to Helms. Helms looked it over and said the aide could send it if he wanted to, but added “Son, just so you understand: I. DON’T. CARE. what the New York Times says about me.”
Unlike many more moderate conservatives, Helms was successful often and got his way often because he honestly didn’t give a rat’s behind whether liberal pundits liked him. Too many Republicans cower and knuckle under when charged with racism or with lacking compassion. Jesse Helms refused to play such games. He did as he saw fit, and didn’t worry about the reaction of his enemies.
THAT is something the Senate Republicans could use.
That sound just the Tea Party. You can see how effective they’ve been: they can’t get anything passed, they’ve created several government crises to no particular effect, and they dominate the Republican Party in the House. But yeah, they get a high score for not giving a fuck what their opponents think about them. Good thing getting people to agree with you isn’t important in getting legislation passed.
Considering what Helms “saw fit”, this sounds kind of like “sure, he molested puppies- but he was honest about it… we need more people like that”. Helms was pretty vile.
:rolleyes: No, the GOP needs fewer, not more, of pols who do not care what the NYT thinks of them, because at this point the GOP can win only by appealing to the swing voters, not the base.
Yes
If he meant DEAD.
The best racist is a dead racist