To Battle the “Affordability” Democrats, The Republican Party Needs a Pro-Economic Growth Agenda. They Could Use a Man Like Jack Kemp Again.
I am old enough and fortunate enough to have once met the late Republican Congressman Jack Kemp. He passed away in 2009, but his influence on economic policy within the conservative movement still lives on. Kemp’s political influence, or I guess you can call it his heyday, was in the 1980’s. Kemp’s best chance to become President would have been in 1988, but George H.W. Bush got the nomination that year. To appeal to Kemp’s supporters Bush promised, “Read my lips no new taxes”, but once in office he listened to his friends Jimmy Baker and Dick Darman and raised taxes. Bush said he raised taxes to reduce the deficit. But Kemp would argue that raising taxes can’t reduce the budget deficit. Only spending cuts and economic growth can reduce the deficit. Bush went on to lose to Bill Clinton in 1992.
It’s no stretch to say that a generation of Republicans followed and learned from Jack Kemp. And Ronald Reagan was influenced heavily by him as well. A good example of Kemp’s influence: the centerpiece of the Reagan economic agenda was passed in 1981, and it came in the form of tax cuts sponsored by Representative Kemp and Delaware Senator William Roth. The Kemp Roth Tax Cut led to the great prosperity of the 1980s.
Kemp, like Reagan, offered a positive agenda of free markets and limited government. He was like an evangelist, a happy warrior, and no one was more articulate and more passionate in their belief that free market economic policies were the best way to grow the economy and reduce poverty. If Kemp were Catholic, he’d be the perfect candidate to be the patron Saint of Economic Growth.
He was a believer in supply side economics. We don’t use the term today, but Kemp’s economic philosophy centered on three things: low tax rates, less government regulation and free trade. For Kemp, economic growth solved all problems. He would argue that the greatest social policy was a private sector job. Economic growth could raise living standards, reduce government dependency, reduce crime, it could solve social problems, and it could reduce deficits. Jack Kemp’s economic philosophy was the opposite of the economics preached by the likes of Zohran Mamdani and Abigail Spanberger.
Well, today it seems that the big buzzword in politics is “affordability”, and most of the political pundits claim that Democrats seem to be out in front on this issue, and Republicans seem to be out of ideas.
I do think for Republicans there is some cause for criticism. Republicans have failed so far, perhaps out of complacency, perhaps they just assume that people already know that socialism never made anything more affordable, and therefore they don’t need to respond to Mamdani and his ilk. But Republicans need to address this issue and be ready with good arguments before the next election. The issue of affordability involves economic policy, and when it comes to economic policy capitalism and free markets always beats socialism and welfare. However, we can’t just assume people know that. For good ideas on economics, I would recommend that Republicans dust off some of Jack Kemp’s speeches.
Democrats such as Zohran Mamdani in New York and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia ran and stunningly won on this issue of affordability. But what they advocate will only make things less affordable.
A couple examples. Mamdani has promised to keep and extend rent control to address the unaffordability of housing. Jack Kemp would have opposed this approach. Housing costs are high, this is true, but the answer is to increase the supply. That is to build more housing. Rent control discourages building. Because rent control limits the potential profit a builder can make, this discourages builders from putting up apartments and condos. Jack Kemp would argue that we need to reduce regulations and give incentives to encourage more construction of housing. The greater the supply of housing the lower the cost. It’s like gas prices. To get them down we have to increase drilling, well to reduce the cost of housing we need to increase construction. Republicans should start a “Build Baby Build” campaign.
Abigail Spanberger was elected Governor a couple weeks ago in part because she convinced voters that she would deal with the affordability crisis in Virginia. The fact that she got away with this is amazing. In Congress Spanberger voted for the massive spending pushed by the Biden administration which gave us the high inflation, which went over 9 percent at one point.
Everyone knew, including Spanberger’s 9th grade daughter (who in case you didn’t know attends a public school), that there was a potential for elevated inflation when we opened up the economy after the covid pandemic. The pandemic was over by the end of Trump’s first term. It ended with the introduction of the vaccine in January of 2020. In March of 2021, Spanberger voted to spend trillions of dollars. This overheated the economy and caused high inflation. Now, according to the media, she has capturedthe issue of affordability.
There is nothing she can do as Governor that can undo the damage that she did as a member of Congress!
Jack Kemp would have told Spanberger that only the federal government can cause inflation. Only the government can make things unaffordable, for example health care and college. Like it or not her votes in Congress gave us the inflation which has given us the affordability crisis that we face today.
In the 1970’s there was a TV show, called “All in The Family”, and in the opening theme song there is line, “mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.”, well I’m not sure about that, but I do believe that we could use a man like Jack Kemp again.
David Shephard is the author of two books: Elections Have Consequences, A Cautionary Tale.
Norton’s Choice: An Inside Politics Exposé: Shephard, David: 9781892538802: Amazon.com: Books
4 comments
In my run for Congress, eons ago, Jack Kemp endorsed me and campaigned for me in Texas. The Reagan organization and Jack schooled me on the Kemp-Roth plan, and I, along with a handful of other candidates, took it public to test it out as policy. It was common sense, really, and once you explained it plainly, people immediately understood it. Jack and I kept up with each other on and off after I came to Washington (and I did a bit of writing for his Presidential run). While he – and I – believed that no tariff barriers were preferable, we both understood that many countries were beginning to erect barriers to American goods and services while dumping specific products into the marketplace, hoping to drive out competition (quite successfully). In addition, VAT schemes up to 17% and 20% began driving up the cost of American goods. My response, not Jack’s that we discussed, was always to use reciprocal rates with each trading partner. Trade barriers always hurt innovation and the broader economy, and they always end up hurting both parties. However, as we’ve seen in this century, it’s too easy an answer for most of the world’s scoundrels.
Jack was the most succinct, powerful, and optimistic voice for sound economic policy – along with President Reagan – we’ve had in the public square for many decades. President Trump certainly has the right instincts, and his tariff war has revealed just how much real market damage was being inflicted on the US economy. At the same time, various bad actors have used our low barriers to capture markets and browbeat US manufacturers into abandoning the American workforce. That said, it should be a 24-7 campaign by the Party and the President to reactivate the campaign Jack Kemp started and never gave up on. Free markets are the only way to grow, innovate, and create an economy that works for every American.
“a positive agenda of free markets and limited government”
Unfortunately, the Republican Party abandoned this agenda approximately 10 years ago.
This past week, the seemingly never-ending Jeffrey Epstein scandal that has dogged President Donald Trump resurfaced with the release of damning emails, hinting at more extensive connections between the two, including a claim that Trump “knew about the girls.”
Ironically, after years of campaigning against LGBTQ+ people and inventing nonexistent connections been transgender people and child abuse, the right has been pushing excuses for Trump’s connections to Epstein—and it’s been down a similarly hypocritical road before.
In the 1990s, conservatives attempted to make political hay out of former President Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The right portrayed itself as the party of “family values,” purportedly in contrast to Democratic debauchery.
But at the same time he was pounding the table about Clinton, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was screwing one of his staffer’s on his office desk, cheating on his wife as she fought cancer—and he eventually married the staffer (and Trump appointed her as US Ambassador to The Vatican).
A few decades later, many of the same right-wing figures lined up behind Trump—who infamously and publicly cheated on multiple wives—while railing against figures like former President Barack Obama as anti-family. Obama has been married to his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama, since 1992.
GOP leaders like Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina have induced whiplash. At one point, she spoke up for victims of sexual abuse but then quickly turned on a dime, saying that she supported Trump in the 2020 election despite his history of sexual assault.
The right has embraced hypocrisy and now thrives on it. But how did that happen?
For years, conservatives have made the concept of “owning the libs” central to their political ideology. The idea is to engage in behavior and use rhetoric that supposedly makes liberals angry, driving them to exhibit this anger, which conservatives then mock.
Even if their behavior doesn’t provoke a tantrum, conservatives have elevated this brand of mockery above nearly everything else, including policy and ideology. This has resulted in the right, including right-wing media like Fox News, becoming fixated on “culture war” issues.
Gingrich’s hypocrisy thus became more or less acceptable on the right because he spent his time as speaker trolling Democrats, pushing offensive rhetoric about the party or insisting that Republicans were morally superior. It didn’t matter what he did behind closed doors—as long as he “owned” the liberals.
A figure like Trump has taken this ethos and turned it up to eleven. Everything about him is orchestrated to incite liberal ire, from his racism and embrace of crackpot conspiracies, to his childish insults and overt corruption. And his underlings like White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and aide Stephen Miller constantly insult the left to win over their boss.
This creates a permission structure on the right where Republicans are allowed to be contradictory, as long as a liberal somewhere is purportedly mad about it.
But this kind of posture has a limit.
Trump can “own the libs” and embrace hypocrisy all he wants—he is a significantly unpopular leader. The public has also made clear that, on the Epstein issue, Trump is the true outlier. The public has repeatedly called for transparency and justice for the victims, survivors, and their families. This shaky ground for Trump has led to Republican defections, which is a departure from the norm.
Shameless hypocrisy might work at the core of the GOP base, but voters outside of the conservative bubble are more than willing to throw Republicans out of office.
Kemp would be persona non grata in today’s Trump Cult . . . along with any other Republican with half a brain.