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WASHINGTON -- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Wednesday that the country would be better off if the Senate was full of people like Jesse Helms, the late senator who was ardently opposed to all kinds of civil rights measures and even tried to block the Senate from approving a federal holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.
During remarks at a Heritage Foundation event dubbed the "Jesse Helms Lecture Series," Cruz told a story of Helms receiving a $5,000 political donation from actor John Wayne, who apparently later told Helms he liked him because "you're that guy saying all those crazy things" and that there needed to be 100 more of him.
"It's every bit as true now as it was then," Cruz said. "We need 100 more like Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate."
Ted Cruz: 'We Need 100 More Like Jesse Helms' In The Senate
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Wednesday that the country would be better off if the Senate was full of people like Jesse Helms, the late senator who was ardently opposed to all kinds of civil rights measures and even tried to block the Senate from approving a federal holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.
During remarks at a Heritage Foundation event dubbed the "Jesse Helms Lecture Series," Cruz told a story of Helms receiving a $5,000 political donation from actor John Wayne, who apparently later told Helms he liked him because "you're that guy saying all those crazy things" and that there needed to be 100 more of him.
"It's every bit as true now as it was then," Cruz said. "We need 100 more like Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate."
And the GOP cannot understand why it cannot make inroads into the minority community. It seems Cruz is saying, "I wish we could return to the good old days of Jim Crow."
REALLY?
It seems like that to you because you're an idiot. Helms loved tweaking guys like you, yanking their chain. There was the famous story where he rode in an elevator with some black female representative and started whistling Dixie.Ted Cruz: 'We Need 100 More Like Jesse Helms' In The Senate
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Wednesday that the country would be better off if the Senate was full of people like Jesse Helms, the late senator who was ardently opposed to all kinds of civil rights measures and even tried to block the Senate from approving a federal holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.
During remarks at a Heritage Foundation event dubbed the "Jesse Helms Lecture Series," Cruz told a story of Helms receiving a $5,000 political donation from actor John Wayne, who apparently later told Helms he liked him because "you're that guy saying all those crazy things" and that there needed to be 100 more of him.
"It's every bit as true now as it was then," Cruz said. "We need 100 more like Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate."
And the GOP cannot understand why it cannot make inroads into the minority community. It seems Cruz is saying, "I wish we could return to the good old days of Jim Crow."
REALLY?
Maddow smacks down Cruz for invoking vicious racist Sen. Jesse Helms | The Raw Story
<excerpts>
At the outset of her segment, Maddow reminded viewers of the time that Helms, in a fit of pique over losing a legislative spat over the Confederate flag, harassed African-American Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun (D-IL) on of the Senate elevator by singing the Confederate anthem Dixie into her face. Moseley-Braun is the only African-American woman to have served in the Senate, and at the time was the Senates sole person of color.
The AP quoted Moseley-Braun, who said, (H)e saw me standing there, and he started to sing, I wish I was in the land of cotton And he looked at Sen. [Orrin] Hatch (R-UT) and said, Im going to make her cry. Im going to sing Dixie until she cries.
And I looked at him and said, Sen. Helms, your singing would make me cry if you sang Rock of Ages, Moseley-Braun recounted.
Helms was also the progenitor of the infamous white hands ad, a campaign ad aimed at Affirmative Action, in which a narrator intoned You wanted that job, and you were the best qualified, but they had to give the job to a minority because of a racial quota, while the camera showed a pair of white hands opening an employment rejection letter.
