Four Years Ago Today...

...Jack Kemp left us. The modern day leader of the American Renaissance was taken way too soon. We remember him today.

Paul Ryan’s New Jack Kemp Style Republicanism

This post by Richard Viguerie so touched me, as I was a big fan of Jack Kemp's, that I decided to re-post this in its entirety:

In one brief line in last night’s acceptance speech, Paul Ryan made himself the Republicans’ star witness in the case against Barack Obama.

“None of us have to settle for the best this administration offers – a dull, adventureless journey from one entitlement to the next, a government-planned life, a country where everything is free but us.”

In a speech that was full of humility, yet so consequential that it eclipsed those of Senator John McCain and former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Ryan also revived the Jack Kemp wing of the Republican Party.

One of Ryan’s early mentors, Jack Kemp never tired of making the connection between freedom, a small government, and economic success. Paul Ryan’s methodical dissection of Barack Obama’s assaults on the freedom of individual Americans and the disaster of Obamanomics proved him to be a worthy inheritor of Kemp’s mantle.

In this, Ryan also began to make good on my observation that his selection as Mitt Romney’s running mate made the Republicans the Party of the future.

Paul Ryan’s emphasis on the future, while so effectively indicting the current President’s economic policies and lack of leadership, did not bode well for Obama’s campaign strategy of personal attacks and excuses.

Ryan’s acceptance speech also brought something that has been strangely lacking in the Republican effort so far: a sense of urgency about that future.

“Before the math and the momentum overwhelm us all, we are going to solve this nation’s economic problems. And I’m going to level with you: We don’t have that much time.  But if we are serious, and smart, and we lead, we can do this,” said Ryan.

However, a campaign based on fear of the future alone is unlikely to succeed. Jack Kemp understood this and so does Paul Ryan.

Toward the end of his remarks, Ryan said, “I learned a good deal about economics, and about America, from the author of the Reagan tax reforms – the great Jack Kemp.  What gave Jack that incredible enthusiasm was his belief in the possibilities of free people, in the power of free enterprise and strong communities to overcome poverty and despair.   We need that same optimism right now.”

The Kemp-like, “We can do this,” may prove to be the Romney/Ryan ticket’s new campaign slogan.

Ryan also showed himself to be the inheritor of Jack Kemp’s brand of Republican populism, as he put himself squarely on the side of the Main Street America that has borne the brunt of today’s economic woes while cronyism protected the big players of the Wall Street/Washington axis with trillions in federal stimulus spending and government bailouts.

Ryan’s commitment that a Romney/Ryan administration would hold federal government spending to its historic norm of 20% of GDP — or less — was also a new and very consequential commitment from a Romney campaign that has been short on commitments and specifics to-date.

While Washington’s pundit class may see that as a throwaway line in a campaign speech, those, in both Parties who have become addicted to the Obama-level of federal spending should consider themselves on notice.  

Two of Ryan’s closest collaborators in Congress, Jeb Hensarling of Texas and Mike Pence, now running for Governor of Indiana, had a bill for a constitutional amendment to do just that (hold spending to 20% or less), and a federal budget reduced to that level would have no trouble passing a Tea Party influenced House of Representatives — if it ever got to the Floor.

While Jack Kemp made economics and tax policy his signature issues, he never shied away from talking about the conservative social agenda and making the tie between a successful society and a moral society.

In this, Ryan also proved himself to be Kemp’s worthy successor as he gave one of the few direct embraces to the right to life heard at this year’s GOP Convention.

In rejecting a society “where everything is free except us,” and in his optimism about the future — if Americans make the choice to join him — Paul Ryan has pointed the GOP and the Romney campaign in a new, and decidedly Jack Kemp-style, conservative direction. END
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The American renaissance that Jack Kemp wrote about and advocated during his life, may yet be upon us. Here's hoping.

Article: Newt the Supply-Side Sizzler

I thought this column by Larry Kudlow was so good that I decided to reprint it here (yellow highlights are my own). Newt's tone comes across as a little bizarre, but the deeper point in my mind is that Newt is looking at a different American future than most of the rest of us. This is a great thing. I think Newt can pick up where Jack Kemp left off in leading us toward an American renaissance:

Say what you will about former Speaker Newt Gingrich. His philosophy, his policy proposals, his track record, his campaign, and all the rest. But the one thing you have to acknowledge about Gingrich is that he’s a sizzler. He has a way with words. And he’s as good a communicator as anyone in modern politics.

In my CNBC interview with Gingrich this week, he slammed President Obama’s tax-the-rich, class-warfare attack on bank’s and businesspeople. He hammered Obama, calling him a hard-left radical who is opposed to free enterprise, capitalism, and “virtually everything which made America great.”

It was a brutal, frontal, hard-hitting attack on the president. He called Obama “the candidate of food stamps, the finest food-stamp president in American history.” He said, “I want to get equality by bringing people up. [Obama] wants to get equality by bringing people down.” He said, “I want to be the guy who says, ‘I want to help every American have a better future.’ [Obama] wants to make sure that he levels Americans down so we all have an equally mediocre future.”

Now, I haven’t heard any of the other GOP candidates offer that kind of response to Obama’s recent class-warfare speech. Maybe I’m missing something. But I haven’t heard it from Mitt Romney or the others in a sizzle fashion, which is the way Gingrich operates.

Frankly, Romney ought to be beating back Obama right now. He should at least be asserting that America’s free-enterprise, capitalist system rewards success, not punishes it, and that free-market economics — including supply-side tax-cut policies, worked in the 1920s under Calvin Coolidge, in the 1960s under Democrat John F. Kennedy, and again in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan.

In fact, Bill Clinton joined with Gingrich in the 1990s to slash the capital-gains tax, cut spending, and enact welfare reform, all of which kept the Reagan boom going. Over 40 million jobs were created in the two decades that followed Reagan’s supply-side tax cut.

Gingrich made a special point during our talk to reestablish his supply-side bona fides. He said to me, “you’re a witness to this. I was part of [Jack] Kemp’s little cabal of supply-siders.” And then came Gingrich’s most sizzling point: “You can make an argument that I helped Mitt Romney get to be rich, because I helped pass the legislation.”

So I asked, “Have you ever made that argument to him?” And Gingrich said, “I am as of right this minute. Just occurred to me.” He went on to say that Romney “should be thanking me because I did the macroeconomic things necessary to make his career possible.”

This is a Gingrich putdown of Romney, is it not? The former Massachusetts governor’s primary attack on Gingrich is that he spent his whole life in professional politics, and therefore doesn’t understand how to grow the economy and create jobs. Romney, of course, had a terrific private-sector career at Bain Capital. And he rescued the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. But Gingrich’s putdown here suggests that without supply-side economic policies, somehow Romney wouldn’t have succeeded. And that neuters Romney’s attack on Gingrich.

Seems to me that Romney needs to respond to the Gingrich putdown. And he needs to make his case in the Gingrich sizzler context.

Years ago, as a rookie running for the Senate against Ted Kennedy, Romney disavowed Ronald Reagan on a number of occasions. Later on, in 1996, Romney ran ads attacking Steve Forbes’ presidential run and flat tax. Since then, Romney has come into the Reagan camp, and that’s fine by me. He also bills himself as a tax reformer. But outside of a corporate tax cut, Romney has offered no across-the-board tax-reform plan for individuals and small-business owners.

He needs to do this if he’s to fight back against Gingrich. He needs to reassert his supply-side credentials and clarify his policy path to prosperity.

Please make no mistake. I am not endorsing here at all. I have a very high regard for Mitt Romney. What I’m looking for is strong competition for tax-reform ideas. Gingrich has a 15 percent optional flat tax. Rick Perry has a 20 percent plan. Herman Cain had 9-9-9. Jon Huntsman has a strong Bowles-Simpson-type tax reform. But where is Romney?

Romney has a good budget-reform program and has endorsed Paul Ryan’s health-care reforms. He has a sound regulatory-rollback strategy. He has moved towards sound money by saying he will not reappoint Ben Bernanke. But at the top of Reagan’s economic-growth plan was an across -the-board tax cut. And it worked.

Republican primary voters are highly supportive of supply-side tax-reform ideas. If Romney is to stop his slide in the polls, and reposition himself as the GOP campaign’s leader, he must respond to Newt Gingrich with a pro-growth tax-reform plan that sizzles.

– Larry Kudlow, NRO’s economics editor, is host of CNBC’s The Kudlow Report and author of the daily web log, Kudlow’s Money Politic$.

"America Is Magic"

Take 4 minutes to watch this:



 Right on Newt! Lead us toward the American renaissance. "You ain't seen nothin' yet."

Newt Gingrich for President

The march toward American renewal; an American Renaissance...let it commence!

Government vs. Philanthropy

In thinking about my recent posts about the need for Transformational Change in America, or an American renaissance. This call came in to Rush Limbaugh on 3-15-11 that really had me saying out loud "that's a great example of what I'm talking about!" Listen to the call here, and be sure to read the notes on the screen:

This call and it's content needs to be considered. Philanthropy needs to be looked at again in this country, and frankly I think philanthropic endeavors need to be reinvigorated. Philanthropy will always, no matter what, do better than anything government does. So, add this to the list of things we need to discuss.