Five Years Later, There Is No Chance Jack Kemp Rests In Peace

I “got into” politics at a very young age. I started making campaign phone calls and handing out sample ballots at 15 (November 1987), fully steeped in the traditional Republican mantras: individual responsibility, anti-Communism, law and order, low taxes, etc., much like the usual very young Republican.

One month later, I stumbled upon a speech on CSPAN by Jack Kemp – my preference for president in 1988. It was the first time I had heard Kemp on domestic issues. The speech itself was supposed to be about urban enterprise zones (an idea to roll back burdensome government regulations in some of the more economically damaged American cities), but in typical Kemp style (the kind that would drive political consultants crazy), he wandered all across the domestic policy space (education, housing, etc.). It is not an exaggeration to say I was never the same afterwards.

For those too young to remember, Congressman Jack Kemp took nearly every stereotype about Republicans, flipped it upside down, and jack-hammered it into the pavement. He was the Republican spokesman for empowering the poor. He repeatedly and endlessly insisted that Republicans not only can speak for poor and working-class Americans, but that we must speak for them. He took Reagan’s “Government is the problem” motto and revealed just how true it really was when it came to “helping” the less fortunate in America.

For a teenager just getting involved in politics (and stuck with the usual Big Media – as we called it then – spin that government always helps and Republicans just had some ideological allergy to that), Kemp was bolt from the blue. His long list of examples of government hurting the poor turned the conventional wisdom (or what little I knew of it at the time) on its head. While Kemp had been a nine-term Congressman to that point (so he was somewhat well known), it was the first I’d heard him on these issues (I came to support him due to his foreign policy positions). It completely realigned me.

From then on, even for politically active teenagers, I was an odd duck: while they looked at candidates and broad themes, I focused on educational choice, farm policy, rent control, zoning, etc. Kemp had revealed something Republicans understood then, but have problems articulating (or even remembering) today: Big Government doesn’t help then poor; it hurts them.

Five years ago yesterday, Jack Kemp passed away. Events of the past week revealed once again the vacuum his departure left. The recent events in Baltimore have forced us all to revisit how we have treated our cities, in particular how government treats them. Yet the only response out of the president (and his party) is a reversion to the failures of the 1960s, while Republicans harp on local leadership issues.

Will anyone bother to mention the higher cost of living Baltimoreans face due to farm policies artificially increasing prices? How about the effect of cotton tariffs on clothing prices? Why aren’t we focusing on the ethanol mandate, its economic distortions, and damaging they are to working-class budgets? Why is there so little discussion about challenging the government’s near-monopoly on schools that it falls to a Democrat (Eva Moskowitz) to lead the charge?

In short, why are Republicans so silent on how the government hurts the poor?

The effect on our politics is toxic, and continuing. As Republicans took their eye of the poor, Democrats have as well. The entire 2012 election was about the “middle class.” The poor were never mentioned. Meanwhile, in Virginia, Republicans are coming dangerously closing to becoming the tax-the-poor party.

Were he alive today, Kemp would rail against this. In the absence of someone to pick up his mantle, I fear he can not rest in peace. It is up to us to remind ourselves, our political opponents, and most importantly the American people: Big Government doesn’t help then poor; it hurts them.

@deejaymcguire | facebook.com/people/Dj-McGuire | DJ’s posts

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