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Posts Tagged ‘Jack Kemp’
January 30th, 2013 at 5:37 pm
Another Home Run by Artur Davis

At NRO, former U.S. Rep. Artur Davis tells important truths to conservatives — namely, that we need to learn how to talk to people who aren’t already on our side and who are not of natural cultural affinity with us (not that they are necessarily culturally against us, but just that they aren’t automatically in cultural concert with us either).

Many of them work with their hands, and their backs and legs and feet hurt at the end of the day. They worry not about freedom, but about the depleted state of their savings. They don’t carry around a pocket copy of the Constitution, but they know that too many of their tax dollars go to Washington, and is it such a quaint thought that they want a return on their investment and want government to work for their interests?

What do we have to say to them, the people who work with their hands….?

Davis is right. Paul Ryan and Bobby Jindal are saying similar things, with Ryan naturally recalling the themes of his late, great mentor, Jack Kemp.

I’ll throw out an issue conservatives need to do better at. We, myself definitely included, have made lots of justifiable noise about the dangers of vote fraud. We cannot back down on that issue no matter how many media people spread cheap shots about how our real goal is “vote suppression.” BUT…. BUT…. BUT, we also must show that we are intensely interested in making sure that as many people who legitimately qualify to vote find it as easy as possible to register and vote — and we must particularly try to figure out how to make voting not such a chore, so that nobody is forced to stand in line for hours just to participate in the electoral process. If there are any left-leaning people who seriously want to reach out and find solutions rather than bash us, we should find them, and see if we can find common ground. If they will admit the indisputable fact that vote fraud is a problem, and help us fight against it, we should admit that our voting system is often too complicated or convoluted.

Anyway, that’s going astray from what Davis said. But it’s just one example, admittedly on a second-tier issue (for most people), of how conservatives should try to broaden our reach. More importantly, we should likewise try to broaden our reach on economics, on opportunity, and on health care, among other major topics.

I’ll end with by quoting Davis again:

The world that Obama does not see in his progressive manifesto, the world that he barely acknowledges or address, it is the space that we can occupy as conservatives if we will only claim it.

December 17th, 2012 at 11:52 am
The Good News on Tim Scott

With news reports saying that South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley today will appoint U.S. Rep. Tim Scott to fill the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Jim DeMint, it’s worth revisiting a column I wrote on Scott when he was first running for Congress back in 2010. I believe mine was only the second major piece on Scott in a non-S.C. publication (Fred Barnes beat me by a week with an excellent piece). I loved the story he told about how his odyssey toward success was launched at a Chick-fil-A:

Young Mr. Scott did, however, hold down a part-time job taking tickets at a movie theater. The Chick-fil-A was next door. He bought fries there regularly. The restaurant’s proprietor, a guy named John Moniz – a “Christian conservative white Republican, although I didn’t know it at the time,” Mr. Scott said – “just started recognizing me, and one day he came up and sat down next to me and started talking.”

Moniz (now deceased) somehow struck a chord with the young customer. Moniz talked about the virtues of discipline and concentration. They talked often and built a cross-generational friendship.


And Scott is a solid conservative:

To listen to Mr. Scott himself is to hear the clear echoes of former Housing and Urban Development secretary and vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp, whom Mr. Scott revered. “That’s what I want to model as a public official. If it has to be done, let it be done by me with my own sweat equity. … The War on Poverty was four decades, and the same people are living in the same neighborhoods and the same bad houses, in the same poverty. A person who is full of compassion who is a conservative has to say that small business in a neighborhood creates jobs, not government. Government intervention does not lead to a more promising future. Entrepreneurship changes lives for real.” Also: “As a small-business owner, I cannot pay higher taxes and hire more people.”

Mr. Scott, though, seems far more comfortable talking about limiting government than Mr. Kemp was…

Now some might argue that Scott’s single term in Congress makes him a less qualified person for the Senate than some others who might have been chosen. But that ignores his 13 years on the Charleston City Council (four as chairman), his term in the state legislature, and his record of from-the-bootstraps successful business development. This extensive background in entrepreneurship and in more local levels of government is, arguably, exactly what is needed in the Senate. It should make him more dedicated to principles of federalism, and keep him better grounded. And it provided him with great experience in down-home, practical politics. He’s not just a talking head; Tim Scott is someone who produces results.

December 5th, 2012 at 8:40 am
Text of Paul Ryan’s Speech to Jack Kemp Foundation

Greta Van Susteren has the transcript of Rep. Paul Ryan’s keynote address to the Jack Kemp Foundation last night.  For fans of Kemp and his notion of The American Idea (i.e. broad-based economic growth, equal opportunity, and cultural renewal), Ryan’s speech is an inspiring formulation of Kemp’s program for the 21st century.  An excerpt:

Americans are a compassionate people. And there’s a consensus in this country about our obligations to the most vulnerable. Those obligations are beyond dispute. The real debate is how best we can meet them. It’s whether they are better met by private groups or by government – by voluntary action or by government action.

And I would add that it’s about finding the most cost-effective way to meet those obligations so that they are financially sustainable.  This is critically important for at least three reasons.  First, it means that promises made to today’s beneficiaries can be kept.  Second, it means that tomorrow’s taxpayers won’t be left with the short end of the stick, being made to pay more than they receive in benefits.  And third, it frees up money; both in the federal budget for other worthy spending, and as a greater share of income retained by taxpayers.  Long-term federal entitlements are the real social contracts in our nation, and Americans owe it to ourselves – through our elected representatives – to reform the entitlement system to ensure its stability and fundamental fairness.

May 14th, 2011 at 10:40 am
Ryan’s Senate Run Would Correct Kemp’s Mistake

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) owes a lot to the late Jack Kemp, Ryan’s former boss at Empower America.  In a published remembrance of Kemp, Ryan said that while Ronald Reagan motivated him to get into politics, Kemp inspired him.

Indeed, Ryan’s “Roadmap to America’s Future” and “Path to Prosperity” budget resolution are models of Kemp’s supply-side thinking about incentivizing economic growth through government policies.  It was thought that, at most, Ryan might entertain becoming the 2012 GOP presidential nominee’s running mate if the right candidate asked.  Much like Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), Ryan is a methodical politician of substance who is purposefully navigating his career trajectory.  Unlike others, Ryan and Rubio seemed committed to establishing a real record before running for higher offices.

But reality may be pushing up Ryan’s time frame.  With the surprise announcement that Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) will not seek reelection next year, Ryan has an opportunity not unlike Jack Kemp faced as a rising New York congressman in the late 1970’s.  Then, Kemp decided not to challenge liberal Republican incumbent Jacob Javits in the 1980 GOP primary.  Had he done so and won, Kemp would have significantly increased his national profile by holding a statewide office at the beginning of the Reagan era.

Of course, to run Kemp would have had to split time between promoting his Senate candidacy and his landmark Kemp-Roth tax cuts – the soon-to-be centerpiece of Reagan’s economic recovery plan.  Like Kemp, Ryan has a game-changing economic program to fight for this next cycle, but unlike his former mentor, I think the odds are very good that Ryan will decide to run for the Senate.  If Democrats are going to make Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” a major campaign theme next year, why not see if Wisconsin voters are ready to promote their state’s best presidential contender to statewide status?

December 10th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
Policy Entrepreneurs

For those CFIF readers looking for intellectually stimulating Christmastime reading, I heartily recommend Walter Russell Mead’s extended blog post titled “The Crisis of the American Intellectual.”  Picking up and expanding on Alan Bloom’s thesis in “Closing of the American Mind,” Mead issues a frontal attack on our nation’s intellectual elites, a group Mead faults as failing to adapt to a changing world.  Himself a Democrat, Mead argues that intellectuals – the best credentialed, most influentially placed people in our society – across the political spectrum owe it to the people and causes they champion to get serious about constructing a workable, sustainable government.  Here is a too brief sample:

Right now, too many intellectuals try to turn this into a left/right debate rather than one about the past and the future.  There is a liberal case for the radical overhaul of our knowledge industries as well as a Tea Party one.  People who want to extend government protections to more groups need to be thinking how government can be radically restructured so it can be more effective at a lower cost.  People who want more education to be available for the poor need to think about deep reform in primary and secondary education, and they need to think up ways to reduce the spiraling costs of university education.  Those who like the public services provided in troubled blue states like New York, Illinois and California need to redesign state government and find alternatives to the tenured civil service bureaucracies built one hundred years ago.  Those who want more access and more equal access to education, to legal services and to medical care need to think about how we can use technology to radically restructure the way we organize and deliver these services — and the more you care about the poor the less you can care about the protests of the guilds.

Governor Chris Christie (R-NJ) is challenging the public education guild (i.e. teachers unions).  Governor Mitch Daniels (R-IN) challenged the bureaucratic leviathan and won key reforms.  Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is challenging the unsustainable structure of the Great Society.  Ryan once worked for Jack Kemp as a speech writer during the latter’s stint as Bob Dole’s vice presidential running mate.  Kemp challenged liberal statists and libertarian anarchists with his vision of an “Opportunity Society,” an approach to government policy that injected economic opportunity down into the roots of the welfare state.

The debate about government spending will dominate our politics for the foreseeable future.  Hopefully, policy entrepreneurs like Christie, Daniels, and Ryan will gain the attention – and the success – their ideas deserve.