Posted on 05/11/2009 1:49:47 PM PDT by reaganaut1
I know I’ll probably catch hell for saying this, but no matter how nice a fellow Jack Kemp was, no matter how genuine his care for the poor might have been, no matter how compelling a political figure he was, and no matter how inspiring he was to a generation of young conservatives — and he was all of those things, as has been pointed out repeatedly — I think his political career ultimately did the cause of limited government more harm than good.
Jack Kemp was greatly responsible for the now widely embraced GOP argument that cutting federal spending is for the most part economically unnecessary and politically counterproductive. Cut taxes, he argued, and we’ll have more than enough federal money to cover existing federal spending commitments, more economic growth to enjoy, and more voters to win. Like Newt Gingrich, his complaint about government was that it went about its job inefficiently, not that it went about doing things that the federal government simply shouldn’t be doing. Ambitious calls to cut federal expenditures during the Reagan years constantly ran into opposition from Jack Kemp.
It sure would be nice if tax cuts alone could deliver all of the wonders advertised by Jack Kemp, but alas, that proved not to be the case. Tax cuts in lieu of spending cuts neither starved the beast nor made government more affordable. It proved politically popular (for a while at least), but it simply transferred wealth from the future to the present and put the first nail (of many to come) in the coffin of the political movement launched by Barry Goldwater. Jack Kemp was not simply unenthusiastic about budget cutting; he was positively hostile to it.
While Jack Kemp’s many speeches in defense of capitalism and entrepreneurship were often inspiring, he never understood what Milton Friedman spent a lifetime patiently explaining: that government spending was the true tax on the private sector. One way or another, all federal dollars come from the private (productive) sector. They might be taxed away, of course, but they might also be borrowed (meaning that taxpayers tomorrow will pay for spending today . . . with interest!) or confiscated indirectly via the printing press (that is, via inflation).
The same holds true for the campaign to rein in federal regulation. From union rules to racial preferences, Jack Kemp often kept company with those who wished to use state power to advance some vision of the public good. While it’s nice to see a Republican actually care about the public good, it’s not so nice to see conservatives embracing government force to secure those visions.
And while Jack Kemp often spoke passionately against foreign tyranny, his rhetorical and political opposition to the same broke down when personal gain was in play. His paid lobbying efforts to defend Hugo Chávez against political attack here in the United States were terribly disappointing to those of us who were once inspired by his eloquent appreciation for human liberty.
Jack Kemp had many, many positive personal and political qualities. But the sooner conservatives put his policy agenda behind them, the sooner they can become serious about doing what God put them on this earth to do — rolling back the state.
Republicans need to stand for tax cuts, but spending restraint is just as important.
I think the author’s view could have been made clear without summarily dismissing all of Jack Kemp’s life as having done more bad than good for conservatism.
I think the author’s view could have been made clear without summarily dismissing all of Jack Kemp’s life as having done more bad than good for conservatism.
I remember the late Congressman Larry McDonald telling me that the problem with Kemp was the he was not interested in cutting the giant fed bureaucracy but was only interested in “how to finance it”.
Reducing Federal Spending. Spending is a TAX as Mr. Taylor points out.
Conservatism is just not about running government efficiently, it is about making sure government's involvement, in the first place, is appropriate.
Progressive Socialism vs. Compassionate Conservatism is a false dichotomy. Government's role is not to be involved in charity. The Founder's new this well.
I was equally disappointed with his performance as Dole’s VP candidate. Kemp’s debate with Gore was a disaster. Gore, in his usual obnoxious mode, walked all over him.
I remember Kemp as being pretty liberal taking compassionate conservative past a reasonable point.
Never was a huge fan of his. But he was certainly far from the worst GOPer we had. RIP
I think the author confused Kemp with a conservative, in lieu of a Republican. Not much evidence of Republicans being conservative enough to roll back the state - at least during the decade that they had the opportunity to try to do that in Washington.
I didn’t like alot about THIS JFK either, but the one idea he had that I wanted to see implemented was the “Enterprise Zones.” These were tax breaks for companies that located in economically disasterous places (i.e., the inner cities). At least make an effort to put these people to work, instead of just keeping them as slaves on the welfare plantation.
Of course, the libs and black “leadership” wanted nothing to do with them. Lord forbid that someone in the central cities might actually want to improve their lot in life.
Why is that federal business? It’s not in the Constitution.
OK point taken.
But wouldn’t you rather see the Constitutional power to tax used as an incentive for achievement than the disincentive of the welfare state . . . which isn’t in the Constitution?
Maybe it’s six of one and half dozen of the other, but we still don’t know if EZ might have a chance to succeed. We have 4+ decades of the “war on poverty” to know that the welfare state had lost.
Exactly!
I expected Kemp to hold his own against Gore. But Gore dismantled Kemp - much to my disappointment. And worse yet, it shouldn’t have been that way.
It was at that point that I becamse absolutely convinced that Bob Dole was gonna lose the election.
These are all state issues.
The federal government herds citizens like we are cattle. That’s not freedom.
Far as I’m concerned compassionate conservatism is liberalism.
Kemp embraced social engineering too much for my tastes. But it felt unseemly to bring this up on his passing, so I didn’t. Besides, there was a lot of good in him.
Jack Kemp thought he was a better person than any other Republican that didn’t embrace his ideas. He tangled more with Pubbies than any Dems. He was a good man though.
His performance against Gore made me write him off for good. I remember anticipating that debate like a big baseball or football game, and feeling confident that he would be able to shred a moron like Gore. Wow, what a blithering idiot he turned out to be. As far as I’m concerned he was no conservative icon, even though he was on the right side of most issues.
I was completely unaware of this and I am very disappointed.
I was hoping someone would write a corrective to all the recent praise for Jack Kemp. Kemp was certainly a very important figure for conservatives and Republicans on the tax issue. But Kemp’s notion that the increased revenues from supply-size tax cuts could pay for an expanded welfare state ran up against the mathmematical fact that there is no about of money that cannot be outspent, and that the liberals’ appetite for speding knows no bounds.
While Jack Kemp’s many speeches in defense of capitalism and entrepreneurship were often inspiring, he never understood what Milton Friedman spent a lifetime patiently explaining: that government spending was the true tax on the private sector. One way or another, all federal dollars come from the private (productive) sector. They might be taxed away, of course, but they might also be borrowed (meaning that taxpayers tomorrow will pay for spending today . . . with interest!) or confiscated indirectly via the printing press (that is, via inflation).
Milton Friedman had the grace to answer a letter I wrote to him, proposing a mechanism for promoting reduction in the capital gains tax rate. I wrote a similar letter to a Club for Growth man who is far less famous, and on whose name I'm blanking on now, and he also responded. The latter (first name Steve, all I can now remember) responded enthusiastically, but Professor Friedman was essentially dismissive.Freidman was obviously correct in saying that, in absolute terms, government spending and the burden of the government are one and the same thing. Full Stop.
But it is also true that Jack Kemp was correct. Because in relative terms, you would rather live in a Reagan/Kemp/Roth America with a bigger federal budget which is a smaller percentage of the GDP than in the Carter/Mondale America with a federal budget which is smaller, but a huge percentage of the much smaller GDP which which results from greedy tax rates. You cannot yearn for Reagan economic policies and not appreciate the intimate relation between Reagan's policies and Jack Kemp's. They were very similar. And, it should be said, Jack Kemp argued for selling gold at the start of the Reagan Administration. Which was a very good economic call.
Jack Kemp broke with the policy which kept the Republicans in the political wilderness for 40 years - the idea that Republicans should be, as he famously put it, "the tax collector for the welfare state." If the Democrats propose ever-increasing spending, and your response to their success is to demand higher tax rates to balance the budget, what kind of political platform are you then able to run on??? The only way to respond politically to higher spending is with a counterproposal for lower taxes. That leaves us with the two parties playing "chicken" with the deficit. But if the alternative is Carter stagflation . . .
And then there is the sad story of Jack Kemp the VP candidate. I had high hopes that Kemp would be a great president; I wanted him rather than GHWB in '88. He would never have had to make a "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge in the first place, never mind even think of breaking it. On the tax issue Reagan had the Democrats on the ropes, GHWB let them out. Kemp never would have budged, and the Democrats would have been in desperate shape in '92 and probably unable to elect Bill Clinton. Which could have meant two more Republican nominations to SCOTUS . . .
But as a VP candidate Kemp was cast against type, and it didn't work. Kemp allowed Gore to flatter him, while positioning the entire rest of the Republican Party as racists. As a VP candidate he was an utter catastrophe. He stopped being presidential timber at that very moment.
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