With Helms Out of the Way, the GOP Has Room to Breathe

Twenty-five years ago, Jesse Helms was the grand old man of the so-called New Right, helping to propel a movement intent on reshaping the Republican Party. Now, as the 79-year-old Sen. Helms heads toward retirement, the New Right doesn’t seem so new anymore--because, of course, the Republican Party has so thoroughly incorporated the Helms-inspired forces.

Helms’ departure raises anew the question of what kind of face--and what set of policies and attitudes--Republicans want to present to the nation to solidify their hold on the presidency and expand their presence in Congress. The prominence of Helms surely served as a disincentive to blacks to join the Republican Party, and he has made it more difficult for the party to capture the political center.

Helms and the 98-year-old Strom Thurmond, who also will leave the Senate, are the last of the Republican senators with deep roots in the Old South of racial segregation, low-wage manufacturing and small-town culture. But the GOP’s Southern strategy, which originated with Richard Nixon’s 1972 anti-civil rights effort to crack the once-solid Democratic hold on the region, and the New Right movement to which they contributed have become integrated into the Republican Party mainstream, in the South and in the nation.

Now, the GOP may have become so Southernized as to diminish its appeal in other parts of the country, especially the Midwest and the Northeast. And despite having a Republican in the White House and still controlling the House, there the party has good reason to worry. Just as California returned to Democratic rule as the state became more diverse demographically and economically, Democrats also have proved resilient in statewide races in a more suburbanized South that has grown robustly in population and new-economy jobs over the last two decades.

Whit Ayers, a Georgia-based Republican pollster, has described the Southern GOP as divided into “pragmatic conservatives” and “ideological conservatives.” President Bush, with his campaign slogan of “compassionate conservatism” and his emphasis on bipartisan problem-solving, has sought to bridge that divide. And yet, his huge multiyear tax cut and his tilt to the right on domestic policies demonstrate the continued pull of the ideological conservatives within his party.

As Mac McCorkle, the North Carolina-based Democratic analyst, observed, unsuccessful Republican candidates have come across as “non-progress, non-metro candidates.” Successful Democratic candidates, says McCorkle, have found ways to appeal to “people’s rising social expectations.”

Throughout his three decades in the Senate, Helms has unabashedly sought to yank the GOP--and the nation--to the right. For much of his career, he has been in the Senate’s minority party. He seemed more comfortable in the opposition than in the few years he served as part of the majority.

What’s more, Helms encouraged and helped raise millions of dollars for the political movement that came to be known as the New Right: foes of legalized abortion; advocates of free-market economics and a muscular anti-communist foreign policy; and a coalition of conservative Christians.

There is no doubt that the content and style of Helms’ politics helped drive the political dialogue--in North Carolina and in the nation--to the right. The question is whether the GOP, having been reshaped by Helms and the once-New Right, has the flexibility to respond to the nation’s rapidly changing economy and society.