He was a decent pro quarterback.
Posted on 10/12/2015 9:23:32 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
A recent piece at Breitbart sounds almost Trotskyist in its call for the GOP to be a “pro-worker party,” but their most interesting move is to accuse Rep. Paul Ryan of being “the staffer who had aided Jack Kemp and William Bennett in their crusade against Proposition 187.”
In case you haven’t been paying attention, populist forces on the Right are attempting to strangle the baby in the crib — to dissuade Ryan from seeking the speakership.
My guess is it’ll work. Ryan doesn’t even want the gig. And who could blame him?
To discredit Ryan, they’ve invoked the name of his old mentor, former Rep. Jack Kemp. Yes, that Jack Kemp — you know, the same guy who introduced Ronald Reagan to supply-side economics, giving Reagan the last missing ingredient — optimism — he would need to win the presidency.
I know, what a Commie!
Ryan may or may not be heir to Kemp’s legacy (I was one of the first to call out his pattern of unconservative votes), but the attacks on him only serve to illustrate how far today’s populist strain has shifted from Kemp’s conservative philosophy to an angry, protectionist (borderline nativist) style of populism in which Donald Trump is considered a conservative hero.
Along those lines, has a book ever been timed better than the one written by Morton Kondracke and Fred Barnes about Jack Kemp? The duo are taking advantage of the opportunity, too:
“[Kemp] was the antithesis of Donald Trump in practically every way except high energy,” Kondracke told Newsmax TV. “So I think he would be perfectly appalled. He would want the Republican Party to be concentrating on ideas that would make life better for ordinary Americans”
Kemp would disagree with Trump on “many, many things,” Fred Barnes continued. “Starting with immigration and particularly deportation and things like that, eminent domain, I can think of many things. But the difference between Jack Kemp and other Republicans today — and certainly with Donald Trump — is that Kemp was a uniter.”
(Stay tuned for my interview with Kondracke on a future episode of the Matt Lewis & The News podcast.)
I’ve long had a theory that a lot of folks in this populist camp (not all, but many) became involved in politics fairly recently — as a reaction to 9-11, or to Obama’s election and/or the rise of the tea party (which technically began before Obama’s election). My point here is that these are not typically folks who have a coherent conservative worldview, but rather, frustrated Americans who are reacting to some recent event.
Few of these people were active in politics when Kemp was helping invent Reaganomics — or when he was working (perhaps in vain) to prevent the GOP from becoming a sort of European-style right populist party.
Why would they have any reverence for them now?
Rep. Paul Ryan has chosen to be a putz. He no longer even belongs in the same sentence as Jack Kemp.
Today's Democrats need to be DEFEATED and SENT HOME, they cannot be compromised with!
Donald Trump did not take the GOP, guys like Ryan walked away from it.
Matt K. Lewis is a propagandist for The Cheap Labor Express
Take everything he writes with a boulder of salt
What was so great about Jack Kemp?
I’ve seen nobody refer to Trump as a “conservative hero”.
He’s the only chance we’ve got of wresting control from the corrupt DC uniparty. He may not be conservative, but he seems to read Free Republic and change tack when he’s off-course.
Correct, because he is greater than a hero.
Hint:
A hero occasionally makes a mistake.
He was a decent pro quarterback.
Jack “I agree with Al Gore” Kemp.
“A recent piece at Breitbart sounds almost Trotskyist in its call for the GOP to be a “pro-worker party,”
Notice the left wing style smear of conservatives who are really talking pro-middle class and are tired of being screwed by the big donor uniparty.
Attended a Q&A with Jack Kemp in the early ‘90’s. Some good ideas, but by that time it was apparent he’d played too much football without a helmet in his youth.
Kemp was painfully boring with zero charisma.
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