Sudden News of Jack Kemp's Death at 73. Jack Kemp was a journeyman politician who converted a scrambling professional sports career into a working class district representation for the Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan Congress and then a garrulous HUD Cabinet seat for George H.W. Bush. He was of the celebrity athlete crowd that did a lot of TV and after dinner speaking yet was regarded dismissively and suspiciously the last decade by the prominent Southern conservatives who took control of the GOP under George W. Bush. In 1996, Kemp's half-surprise pick as the antique Bob Dole's running mate -- other candidates were Colin Powell and several Southerners -- ended Kemp's electable career and launched him on the lecture circuit preaching supply-side economics sprinkled with banal social policy. Kemp's failure to rally a following in the GOP was less Kemp's problem than an illustration that, during Bill Clinton, the GOP went from Ronald Reagan's vast Electoral College wins in '80 and '84 to a tainted Electoral win for the inarticulate George W. Bush in 2000. Jack Kemp's GOP base in the the North, never strong, just withered or wandered off these last two decades. Kemp was not a visionary politician, more a nostalgic figure, mostly attached to the Arthurian legend status of the Roth-Kemp tax cut bill in the Reagan administration. Kemp's 1988 run for the presidency was chatty and feeble, chiefly defined by his positions on the tinny social alarms of that time. Kemp's passing is part of an unhappy, clumsy transition for the GOP. What he represented is a lost argument about conservatism and federal social welfare progress; where he came from (Southern California and Northern New York) are now independent or Democratic areas; and even
his policies about supply-side, the Laffer curve, and tax cutting for growth, are moot in the face of trillion dollar bailouts, stimulus bills, energy and health budgets. He was only 73, yet his legacy makes him seem far older. The future for the GOP is none of the Reagan-Kemp-Bush-Dole World of marginal tax cuts for the rich and ready, deregulation for the banks and pharma, marketplace laissez-faire preachiness, high rolling in big markets and low expectations of the unprivileged, and national defense to fight the Martians. Gone with the 20th Century wind. What is a Republican during the Obama administration? Nothing much to do with old, old Jack Kemp, Republican.
Jack Kemp dead? I hadn’t even realized that he still drew breath, a lacuna in my knowledge of current events doubtless shared by many Americans.
You point out that Kemp’s old stomping grounds, Southern California, has gone from Republican to Democratic. As I understand it, this is in large measure due to the demographic tidal wave that has engulfed that State. California’s last chance to avoid the social and financial disaster that has now befallen it, the doomed Proposition 187, was a measure to halt welfare payments and deny social services to illegal immigrants. It says much about Kemp, that he opposed Proposition 187, even though 78% of that State’s Republicans supported it.
A good man of my acquaintance, whom I will refer to as X, recounts a story about the late Congressman that is just as revealing, in its way.
Know that X is a successful campaign manager with a deep sympathy for, and understanding of, the South. That he is also a principled conservative perhaps explains why he has never registered as a member of the GOP, although he has gotten more than a few Republicans elected, some to national office. In addition, X also more-or-less single-handedly prevented the imposition of an income tax on our fair State, which he holds to be his proudest accomplishment.
Each year X hosts a well-known political dinner that draws major state and national players from both parties. Around the time that Wrong-way Kemp was preparing his ill-conceived run for the Presidency back in the late Eighties he was scheduled to speak at one such event. It fell to X to pick him up at the local airport.
X is not only very, very smart, he is amiable, and during the drive to the hotel where the dinner was to be held they chatted pleasantly, probably about football, until they chanced to pass some small business or other that flew a Confederate flag.
Kemp became agitated and red in the face. He pointed at the flag and said that it represented everything that was wrong with this country. His voice became shrill, and he expressed amazement that any miscreant would be so brazen as to display “that thing.” You could reasonably say that he was pitching a fit.
All amiability fled, X pulled into the nearest parking lot, and proceeded in no uncertain terms to remind the political hopeful just where he was, and why, and that not everybody around here necessarily cared to hear his misbegotten opinion on Confederate symbols. In fact, X continued rather more loudly than usual, he himself had quite a few Confederate ancestors who fought in the War Between the States, and he was damned proud of each and every one of them. He then went on to tell the Congressman a few other things along those lines, ending in the suggestion that he try not to act like a complete jackass while he was in town.
Kemp very wisely held his tongue for the rest of the ride. He also managed to keep his opinions about the Confederate flag to himself during the after-dinner speech he gave, although doubtless with some difficulty. But it did him no good. X saw to it that word spread about the way he had shot his mouth off. And that, as they say, was that. Kemp was through in these parts.
With the passing of another in a dying breed of supply-siders, we find ourselves yet another step closer to the American mullahstrocracy. Let me explain: The mullahs believe that whenever women and men come together it cannot help but result in an orgy of illicit sex. They then go out of their way to craft all kinds of absurd and restrictive legislation to prevent this from happening.
Leftists believe that wherever there is capitalism, there is corruption, inequity and injustice. They then intrude into the free workings of markets with all manner of absurd regulations and restrictions, crippling them.
The result in both instances is devastating. The mullahs succeed in creating a population of psychologically challenged emotional midgets who are just as likely to blow themselves (and others) to smithereens as draw breath. While the Leftists end up strangling the golden goose, beggaring their populations and reducing their charge to a pathetic collection of beggars with nothing better to do than stick their hands out.
Buffalo and Upstate NY. Tarnished buckle of the rust belt. Some rust belt cities are re-inventing themselves, Buffalo does not. Jack Kemp would have been eaten alive by the NYS legislature where overspending and excess taxation are the word du jour. Awful weather, high unemployment, a NYS Attorney General who sues CEOs to make headlines.
This period reminds me of the 1960s and early 70s. Bill Buckley and few others were fighting an intellectual war against a well-established and very sexy Democratic party. It took them decades to get Reagan into the Presidency.
The GOP may be down, but they are in a better position than they have been in the past. There is a strong Conservative media, country still leans to the right slightly, taxes are going to go up in the future.
Funny how the two most famous Alumni of the buffalo Bills are Jack Kemp and Orenthal James Simpson.
Were you riding in the car with X and K or is this hearsay from X? Just wondering.
Were you riding in the car with X and K or is this hearsay from X? Actually, just wondering if there were any news reports of this that you can reference to validate this story of a great American.
Fantastic Mr Koelliker.
You hit a Home Run !
John,
Kemp should get some credit for his foreign policy stands - Jackson/Vanik and more. He was on the right side of those issues and his holding those positions as a prominent politician made a difference in those years.
Kemp should have worried less about who other countries let out and more about who America lets in. He lacked the dimensionality to understood Chesterton's maxim that the true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.
I just love how people change their perspectives on things when it suits them to disparage someone or tear down something.
That was far the only time that Kemp stuck his cleats in his mouth over the Southern Question.
As for X, he is a man of rare integrity and courage, characteristics I have seen him display repeatedly, one of those times being an occaison of some personal risk to himself. He is just not the kind of guy anybody better mess with, as more than one elected official has discovered too late. This includes the crooks and clowns in our State legislature who tried to sneak through an income tax. X's word is simply not to be doubted.
Correction: The first sentence should read "That was far from the only time that Kemp stuck his cleats in his mouth over the Southern Question."
What's the "Southern Question?" I'm not familiar with that.
Did the story of Mr X pulling over and giving Mr K a good Southern tongue lashing make any news publications... an unregistered campaign manager stopping his car in a parking lot with a man of Kemp's stature and telling him how the cow eats the cabbage?
If not, it sure seems like it would have. I don't know, but, it also seems that Mr K would not have been traveling alone.
Did the story of Mr X pulling over and giving Mr K a good Southern tongue lashing make any news publications... an unregistered campaign manager stopping his car in a parking lot with a man of Kemp's stature and telling him how the cow eats the cabbage?
If not, it sure seems like it would have. I don't know, but, it also seems that Mr K would not have been traveling alone.
What is the "Southern Question." I'm not familiar with that phrase, but, it sure sounds ominous.
David/Spencer, read the first post again, carefully this time, then tell me where the word "unregistered," or an equivalent synonym, appears. X has been a regional campaign manager for at least one Presidential winner, and managed the successful campaign of a US Senator, among many other contests.
In any case, Kemp was just a Representative back then, not Bono or the Pope. Why is it so hard to believe that he was traveling alone? After all, you didn't have any trouble believing that 300 million Chinese were being relocated in preparation for possible nuclear war with America: http://johnbatchelorshow.com/jb/2009/01/bombing-shanghai/ Compared to that, this should be relatively easy to swallow.
I know what I wrote concerning forced migration in China and it wasn't what you implied that I wrote. I attributed forced migration as being a necessity of migrant workers who had come to the metros for a better wage and had ran out of opportunity and forced back to the villages. I also cited my sources for the info of the millions affected. So, get it right Kennet. This just proves my point about changing perspectives and telling half truths.
Kenneth wrote: "That he (Mr X) is also a principled conservative perhaps explains why he has never registered as a member of the GOP" -- "Around the time that Wrong-way Kemp was preparing his ill-conceived run for the Presidency back in the late Eighties he was scheduled to speak at one such event. It fell to X to pick him up at the local airport."
Kemp was a fine American and optimist. Even till his death. And he had been in the fight for almost twenty years when this story of yours supposedly took place and he served his country for almost another twenty years after this story of yours supposedly took place. Reagan? Bushes? Everyone of any consequence in the past forty years, he has been respected.
Just wondering if this story of yours made any news journals or local broadcasts that we might reference for validity.
After all, it got the racial, the spatial, the facial, and the flag. Got a reference?
*Another thing Sam/Kenneth- I re- read your post on this story and it sure seems like you got alot of info there... just like you were in the car with them:*
"X is not only very, very smart, he is amiable, and during the drive to the hotel where the dinner was to be held they chatted pleasantly, probably about football, until they chanced to pass some small business or other that flew a Confederate flag. Kemp became agitated and red in the face. He pointed at the flag and said that it represented everything that was wrong with this country. His voice became shrill, and he expressed amazement that any miscreant would be so brazen as to display “that thing.” You could reasonably say that he was pitching a fit.
All amiability fled, X pulled into the nearest parking lot, and proceeded in no uncertain terms to remind the political hopeful just where he was, and why, and that not everybody around here necessarily cared to hear his misbegotten opinion on Confederate symbols. In fact, X continued rather more loudly than usual, he himself had quite a few Confederate ancestors who fought in the War Between the States, and he was damned proud of each and every one of them. He then went on to tell the Congressman a few other things along those lines, ending in the suggestion that he try not to act like a complete jackass while he was in town."
*Another thing Sam/Kenneth- I "carefully, duh," re- read your post on this story and it sure seems like you got alot of info there... just like you were in the car with them:*
"X is not only very, very smart, he is amiable, and during the drive to the hotel where the dinner was to be held they chatted pleasantly, probably about football, until they chanced to pass some small business or other that flew a Confederate flag. Kemp became agitated and red in the face. He pointed at the flag and said that it represented everything that was wrong with this country. His voice became shrill, and he expressed amazement that any miscreant would be so brazen as to display “that thing.” You could reasonably say that he was pitching a fit.
All amiability fled, X pulled into the nearest parking lot, and proceeded in no uncertain terms to remind the political hopeful just where he was, and why, and that not everybody around here necessarily cared to hear his misbegotten opinion on Confederate symbols. In fact, X continued rather more loudly than usual, he himself had quite a few Confederate ancestors who fought in the War Between the States, and he was damned proud of each and every one of them. He then went on to tell the Congressman a few other things along those lines, ending in the suggestion that he try not to act like a complete jackass while he was in town."
Here are some of your words re the 300 million Chinese purportedly being shifted around as part of preparations for nuclear war with America:
http://johnbatchelorshow.com/jb/2009/01/bombing-shanghai/index.php#comment-1791
"Complete understanding on this.
"I believe the PLA plan entirely in sync with the mindset being as it is. Not hard to grasp in the long term and easy to see."
No, not hard to grasp, SpencerDavid. Not exactly dripping with skepticism, either.
Then again, maybe you really did have trouble buying into the premise behind Mr. Batchelor's entertaingingly dystopian "Bombing Shanghai" piece. God knows I did, as I joking indicated at the time. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof and all that.
But that raises the awkward question of why you chose not to demand as high a level of proof from Mr. Batchelor--which, if his post is even remotely correct, would make it the most tremendous journalistic scoop of all time, bigger than Watergate, 9/11, the re-emergence of the Lost Continent of Atlantis, and a cure for halitosis, all rolled into one--as you now do of my comparatively mundane anecdote.
You even claim to think that if two fairly important men get into an argument during a car trip from an airport to a hotel that it would perforce make the headlines. If you really believe journalists are so thorough, then has it not troubled you that the rather bigger story of the relocation of five percent of the human race has also not been mentioned on TV or in the papers? Odd, to say the least.
In closing, you asked me if I had a reference.
Well, DavidSpencer, yes I do. I have the word of a gentleman. That ends the matter for me.
I'll say no more.
Yeh, that's what I thought...
The thing is I already knew a little about the millions of Chinese in migration... the reasons, the projects, the reeducation programs, etc.
It's just so hard to get news out of that place... news that will stand up to scrutiny, anyway.