Conservative Bias: How Jesse Helms Pioneered the Rise of Right-Wing Media and Realigned the Republican Party

Introduction: Jesse Helms’s Politics of Pious Incitement

Introduction Jesse Helms’s Politics of Pious Incitement In the American South, a region where cultural conservatism and segregation coexisted with loyalty to the Democratic Party and wide support for liberal economic policies, Jesse Helms became a pivotal figure in advancing the conservative movement of the 1950s and 1960s. From the 1940s to the early 1970s his career immersed him in politics and mass media : city editor of the Raleigh Times, news director for WRAL radio, editor of the Tarheel Banker, administrative assistant to Senator Willis Smith, and starting in 1960, vice president of WRAL television. In Washington, D.C., as Smith’s assistant, the young Helms developed a national vision for conservative power. He recognized that conservative southern Democrats had more in common with western and midwestern Republicans—like Richard Nixon, Robert Taft, and Joseph R. McCarthy—than with liberal Democrats. A national conservative party, however, would require southern realignment. In 1953 Helms left Washington for a private-sector job promoting free enterprise. His new position afforded him a chance to advocate realignment. Although his critics have often painted Helms as a fringe figure, such depictions represent wishful thinking rather than a serious appraisal of his influence. True, Helms—a polished, well-connected extremist in a banker’s suit—expressed views associated with the fringe during the postwar decades. But Helms helped conservatives win a majority, first in North Carolina and then nationally. He believed the liberal consensus was shallow, mainly an elite phenomenon. The problem was how, with a moderate to liberal media, the right could reach these voters. He found solutions. By the 1970s, no one could doubt Helms’s centrality to the conservative movement. He signed a fund-raising letter for the Moral 1 2 · Conservative Bias Majority, and the dollars streamed in. His National Congressional Club supplied Ronald Reagan with money and ideas during his 1976 and 1980 campaigns. In his autobiography, Bill Clinton charged that Helms lay behind Kenneth Starr’s appointment as a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton’s activities.1 Even before his election to the U.S. Senate, then, Helms had become a significant figure in American political history. There were two reasons for this. First, he forged a new form of southern conservatism that made it possible for movement conservatives, grounded in the South and the Republican Party, to gain power. He rooted conservatism in private enterprise as the vanguard of a modern, progressive society—one that could simultaneously provide prosperity and maintain traditional values. Avoiding discussions of “race purity” yet never criticizing racists, Helms made white supremacy “safe” for conservative campaigning. His commentaries united conservatives: working class with country club, Democrats with Republicans, small-government advocates and do-anything-to-win anticommunists with segregationists and conservative Christians. Second, Helms pioneered the attack on the “liberal media” and, most important, the building of conservative media. While he was vice president of WRAL-TV in Raleigh, Helms’s commentaries and news department undermined Democrats, advanced conservatism, and challenged the forces advocating change. His commentaries made him something new—a conservative TV personality—and represented the culmination of a career as a media insider. Helms intended to use WRAL’s influence to elect conservatives. His news department and commentaries anticipated Fox News’ barely disguised conservative advocacy. Risking WRAL’s broadcast license, he defied the Federal Communication Commission’s Fairness Doctrine for the conservative movement. His commentaries and news department molded the 1960s anti-liberal backlash in North Carolina into a powerful voter coalition supporting conservative Republicans. A Movement Conservative Since Reagan’s victories in the 1980s, historians have investigated the rise of the New Right. They found its origins in the conservative movement of the 1950s and 1960s and the leadership of William F. Buckley Jr. and Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. With the foundation of National Review in 1955, Buckley built a conservative alternative to mainstream Introduction · 3 media and a movement culture. In his books, magazine, and media appearances he attacked liberal elites in politics, academia, and the media while espousing a populist religious traditionalism. Buckley’s magazine brought together disparate conservative elements: traditionalist Catholics and Protestants, libertarian advocates of private enterprise and small government, and anticommunists demanding victory over communism abroad and conformity at home. He used his magazine to distance the movement from the most objectionable elements of the right, most notably the John Birch Society (JBS) and southern segregationists. But Buckley was measured in his...