Conservative icon Jesse Helms dead at 86

[Chris_]

Conservative icon Jesse Helms dead at 86

Raleigh, N.C. — Jesse Helms, the firebrand U.S. senator whose outspoken, conservative views polarized North Carolina and U.S. voters for decades, died at 1:15 a.m. Friday in Raleigh, according to John Dodd, president of the Jesse Helms Center.

He was 86. His cause of death was not released. Funeral arrangements will be forthcoming, Dodd said.

Helms served five terms in the U.S. Senate, retiring in 2003 because of his faltering health. During his 30 years in Capitol Hill, the North Carolina Republican became a powerful voice for a conservative movement that was growing both in Congress and across the country, and he used his position to speak out against issues like gay rights, federal funding for the arts and U.S. foreign aid.


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[mamacags]

R.I.P.   


Did the grave dancing commence at DU yet?
edited to add, well of course it did.......
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3381664

[Chris_]

ensho (1000+ posts)      Fri Jul-04-08 10:48 AM
Response to Original message
20. good, hope he suffered a long and painful death

 Retired AF Dem  (1000+ posts)      Fri Jul-04-08 10:55 AM
Response to Reply #20
26. I just dont understand why some people
 think we are such assholes. 

Yeah, I wonder why?

[Tucker]

RIP. The last of the old south.

[tuolumnejim]

RIP.  :innocent:

Link

RALEIGH, North Carolina - Former Sen. Jesse Helms, who built a career along the fault lines of racial politics and battled liberals, Communists and the occasional fellow Republican during 30 conservative years in Congress, died on the Fourth of July.

He was 86.

Helms died at 1:15 a.m., said the Jesse Helms Center at Wingate University in North Carolina. He died in Raleigh of natural causes, said former chief of staff Jimmy Broughton.

“He was very comfortable,” Broughton said.

Funeral arrangements were pending, the Helms center said.

“America lost a great public servant and true patriot today,” White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said few senators could match Helms’ reputation.

“Today we lost a Senator whose stature in Congress had few equals. Senator Jesse Helms was a leading voice and courageous champion for the many causes he believed in,” McConnell said in a statement.

Helms, who first became known to North Carolina voters as a newspaper and television commentator, won election to the Senate in 1972 and decided not to run for a sixth term in 2002.

“Compromise, hell! ... If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?” Helms wrote in a 1959 editorial that foretold his political style.

Slowed by variety of illnesses
As he aged, Helms was slowed by a variety of illnesses, including a bone disorder, prostate cancer and heart problems, and he made his way through the Capitol on a motorized scooter as his career neared an end. In April 2006, his family announced that he had been moved into a convalescent center after being diagnosed with vascular dementia, in which repeated minor strokes damage the brain.

Helms’ public appearances had dwindled as his health deteriorated. When his memoirs were published in August 2005, he appeared at a Raleigh book store to sign copies but did not make a speech.

In an e-mail interview with The Associated Press at that time, Helms said he hoped what future generations learn about him “will be based on the truth and not the deliberate inaccuracies those who disagreed with me took such delight in repeating.”

“My legacy will be up to others to describe,” he added.

[Wretched Excess]

dup

I will merge 'em.