More remembrances of Jack Kemp

Conservative hero

May 7th 2009 WASHINGTON, DC.From The Economist print edition

A liberal Republican in the best sense

WINSTON CHURCHILL once said that he “preferred the past to the present and the present to the future”. Jack Kemp had exactly the opposite point of view. For him the future always promised to be better than both the present and the past—provided that the government would just get out of the way.[full article]


The Importance of Jack Kemp

By Jeffrey Lord on 1.9.09, American Spectator

"When you tax something you get less of it, and when you reward something you get more of it."
With that simple exhortation -- and this is a man born to exhort -- Jack Kemp changed his party, changed his country and, ultimately, changed the world. [full article]


What Jack Kemp Accomplished: The congressman from Buffalo changed his party and the country for the better.

by Fred Barnes, The Weekly Standard, 05/03/2009 7:20:00 PM

Jack Kemp was a speaker in search of an audience. But unlike most of Washington, including the city's journalists, Kemp had something important to say. He may have been embarrassed about his academic background--he was a physical education major at Occidental College in California--but the truth was he knew more about economics and what worked in the real world to create growth and jobs than almost anyone else in town.

[Excerpt] Here are the four things I give Kemp credit for:

1) Popularizing tax cuts as the best and most reliable way to spur economic growth and create jobs.

2) Persuading Ronald Reagan to adopt a 30 percent reduction in individual income tax rates initially as the main domestic message of his campaign in 1980 and then as the top priority of his presidency.

3) Transforming Republicans from an effete country-club party into a broad-based party with appeal to middle and working class voters.

4) Making, along with Reagan, Republicans the optimistic, positive party of ideas. [Full Article]


Heritage Foundation Mourns Loss of Jack Kemp, Fighter and Leader

Posted By Rory Cooper On May 2, 2009, The Heritage Foundation

Heritage Foundation President Edwin Feulner tonight issued the following statement on the death of Jack Kemp, former secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and longtime Heritage Foundation Distinguished Fellow:

“Jack Kemp was a leader – whether it was in a football huddle, a national political campaign or a policy discussion about the Austrian school of economics.

“I first met Jack nearly 40 years ago, during his freshman year in Congress. When he introduced the Jobs Creation Act – a major legislative advance of supply-side economics – I knew I had found an ally. That ally soon became my friend

“Jack was a ‘bleeding-heart conservative.’ He wanted to make it possible for every American to succeed and eagerly worked with people of all races, colors and creeds toward that end.

“Across-the-board tax cuts and ‘enterprise zones’ for blighted neighborhoods are now common economic prescriptions – especially during these hard times. But to make these ideas respectable, Jack had to fight for them constantly during his years in Congress, as Housing and Urban Development secretary, as chairman of a national tax reform commission, and during his presidential and vice presidential campaigns.

“He won those fights, and millions benefited. The tax cuts that Jack helped engineer in the 1980s gave Americans unprecedented prosperity for decades. His commission also boldly proposed a national flat tax. Those policies also helped spread freedom around the world.

“I remember standing with him in Moscow’s Red Square in 1990. The Cold War was starting to thaw, but few even suspected that the Soviet Union’s days were numbered. Jack knew. As we stood on the square, in view of the Kremlin, he pointed out an astonishing sign: The line for the new McDonald’s restaurant was longer than the line for Lenin’s tomb.

“Many people will remember Jack as a great football player – and rightly so. But he was also a great player in the world of ideas, with a mind as strong as his arm. I will miss his strength and friendship greatly.”

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