May 4th 09, 07:11 AM
In Memoriam: Jack Kemp—His Moment Came And Went. What about America’s?
[This is an expanded version of a blog I wrote this morning on hearing
of Jack Kemp’s passing. In the interim, there has been flood of
uncritical obituary notices, including this one from the leftist
Nation magazine:
“I knew Kemp quite well, and liked him very much…My respect for Kemp
was rooted in my experience with the antiapartheid movement in the US
and South Africa. While many leading conservatives in the US were
busy making excuses for the racist and antidemocratic regime in South
Africa, Kemp emerged as a bold and consistent critic of apartheid.”
Jack Kemp vs. the Party of No, by John Nichols, May 3 2009
It was and is the job of realists and patriots to point out that
American policy has set South Africa on the disastrous path of
Rhodesia/ Zimbabwe and to wonder to what extent it could happen here.
(We might also ask why Kemp wasn’t equally “bold” about the
Palestinians). But that won’t get laudatory coverage in the left wing
media. I have no doubt Kemp was happy with the choice he made. But it
rendered him, after a brave beginning, useless to his party and his
country—PB]
By Peter Brimelow
>> "Jack Kemp's death last night from what seems to have been a shockingly fast-moving cancer sends a chill over an entire generation of conservatives, and not just because of the empathy for his family natural at such a tragic moment, especially for those of us who have suffered similar loss.
Like Wall Street Journal editor Bob Bartley, also an early victim of
cancer, Kemp and his promotion of tax-cutting supply-side economics
was integral to the Reagan triumph in 1980, the crowning achievement
of the historic American Conservative Movement, a success so total
that the problems that finally brought it to power, the Cold War and
stagflation, are now forgotten and discounted.
And like Bartley—and like Bill Buckley—Kemp was complicit in the
subsequent corruption of the Movement, its hijacking by a peculiar
blend of Big Government Wilsonianism, its failure to energize its base
by responding to emerging issues like immigration, and its ultimate
catastrophic defeat.
Kemp's belligerent hostility to any discussion of immigration was no
doubt partly due to his being taken up by the neoconservatives, with
their notorious blind spot about immigration. Indeed, about the first
time I heard his name was when neocon Godfather Irving Kristol
boosted him at a New York investment conference in the 1970s, although
I also remember an equally prominent neoconservative privately telling
me Kemp was "a fool".
But Kemp was just as hostile to any discussion of Affirmative Action,
which the neoconservatives had done heroic work in debunking. Even in
private conversation, he would peremptorily brush it aside and
actually express doubt that racial quotas existed. He obviously never
thought about the issue at all. I am afraid that my second
neoconservative friend was right.
In Washington, like Hollywood, once you've been accepted into the
club, it is evidently possible to make a good living without
discernibly doing anything. Getting accepted was the effect of, if not
the motivation for, Kemp's incessant prattle about how much he liked
minorities (embarrassingly unreciprocated, on all the evidence). Kemp
seems to have had a profitable time in the years after his ignominious
failure as vice-presidential candidate in 1996. I am happy for him,
and now for his beaved family.
Two quick memories:
*
Kemp in his Congressional office in 1979, full of energy and
enthusiasm, completely unable to concentrate, with aides and visitors
waiting wandering in and out like supplicants at the majlis of a
Arabic sheikh. (He offered me a job and later forgot he had done so.
It would have been a disaster for both of us).
*
Kemp at a Hoover Institute Washington function during the first
Bush Administration, raging at George I's betrayal of his "no new
taxes pledge", blustering to his circle of admirers that he was going
to resign his post as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in
protest.
He never did. But had he and not Pat Buchanan challenged George I in
the 1992 primaries, he might well have stood a better chance of
regicide. (Jealousy was probably why Kemp was so energetic in
badmouthing Buchanan's 1992 convention speech, originally seen as a
huge success and subsequently demonized—Marcus Epstein tells the story
here, in the context of the GOP’s exclusion of Ron Paul from the 2008
convention, unprotested, of course, by Kemp. In effect, Kemp sabotaged
Bush's only chance at re-election).
Jack Kemp's moment came, and went.
If America's moment has not yet irretrievably passed, it is no thanks
to him." <<
http://www.vdare.com/pb/090503_kemp.htm
[This is an expanded version of a blog I wrote this morning on hearing
of Jack Kemp’s passing. In the interim, there has been flood of
uncritical obituary notices, including this one from the leftist
Nation magazine:
“I knew Kemp quite well, and liked him very much…My respect for Kemp
was rooted in my experience with the antiapartheid movement in the US
and South Africa. While many leading conservatives in the US were
busy making excuses for the racist and antidemocratic regime in South
Africa, Kemp emerged as a bold and consistent critic of apartheid.”
Jack Kemp vs. the Party of No, by John Nichols, May 3 2009
It was and is the job of realists and patriots to point out that
American policy has set South Africa on the disastrous path of
Rhodesia/ Zimbabwe and to wonder to what extent it could happen here.
(We might also ask why Kemp wasn’t equally “bold” about the
Palestinians). But that won’t get laudatory coverage in the left wing
media. I have no doubt Kemp was happy with the choice he made. But it
rendered him, after a brave beginning, useless to his party and his
country—PB]
By Peter Brimelow
>> "Jack Kemp's death last night from what seems to have been a shockingly fast-moving cancer sends a chill over an entire generation of conservatives, and not just because of the empathy for his family natural at such a tragic moment, especially for those of us who have suffered similar loss.
Like Wall Street Journal editor Bob Bartley, also an early victim of
cancer, Kemp and his promotion of tax-cutting supply-side economics
was integral to the Reagan triumph in 1980, the crowning achievement
of the historic American Conservative Movement, a success so total
that the problems that finally brought it to power, the Cold War and
stagflation, are now forgotten and discounted.
And like Bartley—and like Bill Buckley—Kemp was complicit in the
subsequent corruption of the Movement, its hijacking by a peculiar
blend of Big Government Wilsonianism, its failure to energize its base
by responding to emerging issues like immigration, and its ultimate
catastrophic defeat.
Kemp's belligerent hostility to any discussion of immigration was no
doubt partly due to his being taken up by the neoconservatives, with
their notorious blind spot about immigration. Indeed, about the first
time I heard his name was when neocon Godfather Irving Kristol
boosted him at a New York investment conference in the 1970s, although
I also remember an equally prominent neoconservative privately telling
me Kemp was "a fool".
But Kemp was just as hostile to any discussion of Affirmative Action,
which the neoconservatives had done heroic work in debunking. Even in
private conversation, he would peremptorily brush it aside and
actually express doubt that racial quotas existed. He obviously never
thought about the issue at all. I am afraid that my second
neoconservative friend was right.
In Washington, like Hollywood, once you've been accepted into the
club, it is evidently possible to make a good living without
discernibly doing anything. Getting accepted was the effect of, if not
the motivation for, Kemp's incessant prattle about how much he liked
minorities (embarrassingly unreciprocated, on all the evidence). Kemp
seems to have had a profitable time in the years after his ignominious
failure as vice-presidential candidate in 1996. I am happy for him,
and now for his beaved family.
Two quick memories:
*
Kemp in his Congressional office in 1979, full of energy and
enthusiasm, completely unable to concentrate, with aides and visitors
waiting wandering in and out like supplicants at the majlis of a
Arabic sheikh. (He offered me a job and later forgot he had done so.
It would have been a disaster for both of us).
*
Kemp at a Hoover Institute Washington function during the first
Bush Administration, raging at George I's betrayal of his "no new
taxes pledge", blustering to his circle of admirers that he was going
to resign his post as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in
protest.
He never did. But had he and not Pat Buchanan challenged George I in
the 1992 primaries, he might well have stood a better chance of
regicide. (Jealousy was probably why Kemp was so energetic in
badmouthing Buchanan's 1992 convention speech, originally seen as a
huge success and subsequently demonized—Marcus Epstein tells the story
here, in the context of the GOP’s exclusion of Ron Paul from the 2008
convention, unprotested, of course, by Kemp. In effect, Kemp sabotaged
Bush's only chance at re-election).
Jack Kemp's moment came, and went.
If America's moment has not yet irretrievably passed, it is no thanks
to him." <<
http://www.vdare.com/pb/090503_kemp.htm