Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) praised a former conservative senator best known for his opposition to African American civil rights and gay people on Wednesday, suggesting that the nation would be better off if Congress were still filled with lawmakers who shared his beliefs and positions.
“It’s every bit as true now as it was then,” Cruz said at a fundraiser hosted at the Heritage Foundation. “We need 100 more like Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate.”
Helms, the longest serving senator from North Carolina, is renowned for speaking out against civil rights, voting rights, gay rights, and abortion — causes that Cruz himself has embraced in his short senate tenure.
The late Helms, who died in 2008, famously led a 16-day filibuster to prevent the Senate from approving the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday, described the Civil Rights Act as “the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress,” organized against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act, and opposed any “federal financing of AIDS research and treatment,” arguing that “There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy.” “Homosexuals are weak, morally sick wretches,” Helms was once quoted as saying and he sought to block a nominee “because she’s a damn lesbian.”
Cruz is less inflammatory, but remains committed to Helms’ causes.
