Where did Reagan say this? It was on an LP record he made for Operation Coffeecup — a Fear & Scare campaign organized by the American Medical Association to block passage of Medicare. Doctors’ wives were supposed to organize coffee klatches for patients, where they would play actor Reagan's recording, which declared that Medicare would destroy medicine and lead America to totalitarianism. Amazingly, they're telling the same lies again!
You couldn't make this stuff up! (Click on Operation Coffeecup for the rest of the story.)
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And now for your second cup of coffee . . .
[Originally posted 10 July 2008. Jesse Helms had died 6 days earlier.]
It's polite to wait until they plant the dead in the ground before saying critical things. Senator Jesse Helms, the greatest embarrassment to North Carolina in modern times, cashed in 6 years after retiring from the US Senate, having been elected to 5 consecutive terms, for 30 years.
Maybe Jesse hung around to watch Democrats divide themselves in the most expensive and wasteful Presidential Primary ever. Maybe he left before America might elect a black President.
Jesse, who cut his teeth working as political advisor for Democrat segregationist US Senator Willis Smith, went on to become the first Republican elected to the Senate from North Carolina since 1897.
In 2008, NC now had 2 Republicans in the US Senate, from a State which before Jesse had only elected Democrats. How did this happen?
Since most folks reading this weren't old enough to vote when Jesse was first elected in 1972, perhaps a look back into history is appropriate. The only elected office Jesse held previously was 2 terms on the Raleigh City Council. And until he was 48 years old, Jesse was a registered Democrat. He switched parties only two years before being elected as a Republican to the US Senate.
For 11 years I was on campus of NC State University in Raleigh. Jesse was across Western Boulevard cranking out 5 minute Viewpoint editorials for WRAL-TV. That's where he endeared himself to eastern NC tobacco farmers and conservative Democrats, ranting against LBJ's Great Society, and anything else those 'Lib-ruls' stood for. We'd tune him in at supper time for a daily chuckle. He did 2,761 of them.
[ Added note: President Lyndon Johnson was responsible for designing Great Society legislation, including sweeping civil rights laws, Medicare, Medicade and a War on Poverty.]
I was teaching at Cornell in 1972 when I heard Jesse was running for the US Senate. For the Senate? This has got to be a joke, I thought. Then some fools down in NC elected this racist, bigoted, homophobic conservative to be a major spokesman for people of my native state. Again: How did this happen?
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Helms and his supporters formed the National Congressional Club just after he was elected, to retire a $350,000 campaign debt, and to create a Political Machine to keep him in office. The Club was the first major political organization to reach outside State lines to raise funds from conservatives nationwide. Their strategy has been imitated by Republicans ever since: raise piles of money, hire professional consultants, and create attack ads.
They elected conservatives by pumping these ads into living rooms across the nation, just like Jesse's editorials flowed in constantly. They built a strong political base at the grassroots level, and it worked. Though Jesse produced almost no bills that passed Senate approval, North Carolina voters elected him again and again. For 30 years.
Jesse became known as Senator No, feared for his use of Senate Rules to derail Bills and block initiatives. For a minority party, his blatant, inflammatory obstructionism was very useful.
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Still, this isn't what did the trick for him. With a small number of registered Republicans in NC and an ineffective State GOP, it was only votes of Democrats that elected Jesse. Dissident conservative and moderate Democrats were pushed out of their Party, and found that they were welcomed with open arms into Jesse's party.
It happened for 30 years. And it's still going on today. The reason NC has gone Red for decades, is not because the GOP is smarter. It's because the Democratic leadership is dumber. Bush won 56% of the vote in NC in both 2000 and 2004.
(Update: Obama won NC's 15 electoral votes only by a 14,177 plurality out of over 2.4 million votes cast for President. The Obama Campaign spent millions on visits, TV advertising and opening 50 offices in NC's 100 counties. State Party Chair Jerry Meek, with local parties in each county, could not be counted to deliver the votes needed to win.)
Nowhere was this failure in Leadership more evident than in the lead up to 2008 Presidential Primary Elections. Republicans settled on one candidate early on. Job done, little money spent. Democrats bloodied themselves to a pulp in public, flushing all the money they could raise down the drain as fast as they were able.
Democrats look at Republican successes, but never learn anything from them. The theory NC Democrats have is this: if it didn't work last time, what we need is more of it next time. The same failed Leadership is at work to return Republican Richard Burr to the US Senate in 2010.
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Published originally as the opening portion of [NCDP-on-Trial] 068, July 10, 2008. (updated 10/26/09)
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