It’s John Kerry telling the congregation at Roxbury’s Twelfth Baptist Church that “a vote for Bill Weld is a vote for Jesse Helms,” as if his Republican opponent was a kindred spirit to the KKK.
Did he not realize how monstrous that allegation was, or did he simply not care?
I think Jesse Helms was perhaps the monster....
An unreconstructed Southern conservative, he began his political career in the Democratic Party in the days when many white Southern politicians championed racial segregation. He moved to the Republican party in the 1970s. Helms was the most stridently conservative politician of the post 1960 era,[4] especially in opposition to federal intervention into what he considered state affairs (integration, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act). Helms tried, with a 16-day filibuster, to stop the Senate from approving a federal holiday to honor Martin Luther King, Jr.
>snip<
On social issues, Helms was a traditionalist. He was a "master obstructionist" who relished his nickname, "Senator No".[7] He opposed, at various times, civil rights, disability rights, feminism, gay rights, affirmative action, abortion, and government support for contemporary art with graphic sexuality.[8] Helms brought an "aggressiveness"[9] to his conservatism, as in his rhetoric against homosexuality, and employed racially charged language in his campaigns and editorials.
Make of it what you will, but Helms stood for pretty much everything the KKK stands for. But that doesn't make him a racist by any means.
For what it's worth Bill Weld had his own problems with Jesse Helms:
Weld resigned the governorship after being nominated United States Ambassador to Mexico by President Bill Clinton. He was never confirmed by the United States Senate, however, and hence never served as Ambassador. This was due mainly to opposition from Senate Foreign Relations committee chairman Jesse Helms, who refused to hold a hearing on the nomination, effectively blocking it. Though both were Republicans and though that party held the majority in the chamber, Helms objected to Weld's moderate stance on several social issues. This refusal to hold hearings was also rumored to be at the request of former attorney general and friend of Helms, Ed Meese. Meese had a long standing grudge against Weld stemming from Weld's investigation of Meese during the Iran-Contra affair.
So I'd say the statement wasn't "monstrous, it was just plain silly.
