Unconventional Wisdom: Ross Douthat on Jesse Helms

Ross Douthat of The Atlantic and co-author (with Reihan Salam) of Grand New Party explains why conservatives have been off-base in lining up to pay tribute to Jesse Helms.

He simply was an awful bigot, and worse he was an awful bigot who never expressed a shred of remorse, so far as I know, for his toxic approach to issues ranging from civil rights to HIV to foreign affairs. Far from being the sort of politicians who conservatives ought to defend, out of a sense of issue-by-issue solidarity, he's the sort of politician conservatives ought to carefully distance themselves from, because his political style brought (and continues to bring) intellectual disrepute to almost every cause with which he was associated.