There will be more to say about Sen. Jesse Helms, who died yesterday age 86, in the days to come. But for now I’ll just point readers to Joseph Scotchie’s review of Helms’s memoirs, from the Nov. 21, 2005 TAC. Scotchie writes:

On Capitol Hill, conservatives had no finer champion than Jesse Helms, the longtime Republican senator from North Carolina. Once he took a position on any issue, foreign or domestic, he stuck to it with a tenacity that was absolutely inspiring. There are principled conservatives in Congress today: Ron Paul and Tom Tancredo, for instance, in the House, and Tom Coburn in the Senate. But there will never be another Jesse Helms. He probably was on the losing end of more 99-1 votes than any senator in history. That distinction alone should earn him a special spot in the right-wing section of heaven.