{"id":563,"date":"2008-07-14T20:11:27","date_gmt":"2008-07-15T01:11:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevinbryant.com\/?p=563"},"modified":"2008-07-14T20:11:27","modified_gmt":"2008-07-15T01:11:27","slug":"deminthelms-comparison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/deminthelms-comparison\/","title":{"rendered":"DeMint\/Helms comparison"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is Jim DeMint the next Jesse Helms? The State<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Three reasons the South Carolina senator could be on track to become \u2014 as Helms was famously known \u2014 the most conservative member of the U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span>1.HE\u2019S IDEOLOGICALLY RIGID – <\/span><\/span>DeMint, like Helms, is an ideological purist who holds fast to conservative principles such as low spending, low taxes, deregulation and strong national defense.
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\n<\/span><\/span>DeMint also, like Helms, doesn\u2019t mind antagonizing fellow Republicans who drift leftward on those core principles. DeMint emerged as a leader in the Senate during his fight to sink illegal immigration reform, splitting with much of the Republican Party to kill a plan designed by President Bush.
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\n<\/span><\/span>\u201cI spent a number of years as a team player, trying to work with our leadership, only to find that our leadership was taking us in the wrong direction,\u201d DeMint said earlier this month about his willingness to take on his party.
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\n<\/span><\/span>2.HE\u2019S A CONTRARIAN \u2014 AND HE LIKES IT – <\/span><\/span>DeMint, like Helms, doesn\u2019t mind being a lone voice and using Senate rules to block legislation he doesn\u2019t agree with.
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\n<\/span><\/span>Last week, DeMint blocked a bill that would provide assistance to lending institutions to help homeowners facing foreclosure. The bill eventually passed the Senate on Friday.
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\n<\/span><\/span>\u201cNinety-nine senators like (the bill), and DeMint\u2019s holding it up,\u201d said Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, in The Washington Times. \u201cI question the entire Republican caucus for not doing something about (DeMint). I think it\u2019s wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span>3.HE\u2019S SPEAKING UP FOR CONSERVATIVES – <\/span><\/span>DeMint, like Helms, wants to be the national voice of conservatism.
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\n<\/span><\/span>DeMint:
\n<\/span><\/span>\u2022 Set up the Senate Conservatives Fund PAC to raise money for Senate candidates who pass his ideological litmus test of opposing wasteful government spending, standing strong on national security issues and supporting traditional family values. He said he could see a day where he would use the money to challenge Republican incumbents.
\n<\/span><\/span>\u2022 Penned a recent book, \u201cWhy We Whisper,\u201d that says conservatives are too silent about their beliefs and values. The book prescribes more aggressive advocacy of conservative causes.
\n<\/span><\/span>\u2022 DeMint is raising his national profile by aggressively using the Internet to blog and post videos of himself speaking on an array of social-networking and conservative Web sites. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is Jim DeMint the next Jesse Helms? The State Three reasons the South Carolina senator could be on track to become \u2014 as Helms was famously known \u2014 the most conservative member of the U.S. Senate. 1.HE\u2019S IDEOLOGICALLY RIGID – DeMint, like Helms, is an ideological purist who holds fast to conservative principles such as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-563","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2gEQ0-95","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}