It is Time to Praise, and Blame, Jack Kemp

[Stingo]

Jack Kemp was a success in football, and unfortunately, he was a success in promoting supply-side economics. The embrace of the latter by the social extremists on the right helped legitimize people like George W. Bush, and then Sarah Palin, and that is a lousy legacy Kemp will carry forever. He owns the runin of the Republican Party.

http://allspinzone.com/wp/2009/05/03/it-is-time-to-praise-and-blame-jack-kemp/

[stray cat]

1. George Bush and Sarah Palin are responsible for their own actions just like any of us

[Stingo]

2. Kemp's simplification

of tough economic principles, and the popularization of same, gives the Bushies and Sarah room to work the hate angles. Still, the deserve scorn as well.

[Buzz Clik]

3. It is a tradition on DU to smear political opponents on the day of their death.

Hopefully, Kemp had a low enough profile that we won't embarrass ourselves too thoroughly.

[snowdays]

4. Its a tradition I will bypass easily.

[Buzz Clik]

5. If this goes the way of Reagan, Ford, Wm Buckley and countless others, it's time for a DU vacation.

A lot of DUers tend to be vindictive, obsessive people with short attention spans. They deride conservatives for their intolerance, and then demonstrate their superiority with endless displays of unbridled hate.

:shrug:

[snowdays]

11. Honoring the dead

has always been -- is a value as I grew up--and now. Hopefully I have instilled that in my kids-now grown up --so they will not come onto the net under the cover of anonymous postings.

[Stingo]

6. The post praises him also

[TankLV]

9. Naw - he was a dumb as rocks football brain then, and he died the same way...

He was one of those responsible for our country being in the sad shape that Obama inherited and that we must fix.

Fuck him.

We will NOT let this dumb fuck go peacefully - as it SHOULD be...!

[Rebubula]

17. Very nice...

...how is all that hate working out for you?

Hate changes nothing...

[Stingo]

18. I'm agreeing

Kemp had some pretty good aspects. Alas, the Republicans took his taxation stuff and left all the rest behind, and Kemp himself never had a clear moral stance -- he could be against abortion on one hand and support death squads on the other. Still, I'll condemn him only for his taxation policies, which the Repubs marketed in a way that held their coalition together, at least for a time.

[norepubsin08]

7. Not to mention his attitude towards

Central America..he supported death squads going in and killing the Jesuit priests in El Salvador and the mining of the harbor in Nicaraugua. He's just a repuke!

[Stingo]

8. I would not lump him with the most evil

like with Cheney and such. But he brought a respecta ble face to some horrendous policies, and that helped pave the way for some slanted discourse and bad actions by this country.

[Joanne98]

10. Kemp walked "free-market capitalism" into the Reagan WH!

[Stingo]

12. If anything has

kept the Republican coalition cemented int eh last 30 years or so it is the Kemp introduction of supply-side economics. to that end he is responsible for an awful lot.

[tomreedtoon]

13. Come on! He was the Ralph Malph of supply-side.

You remember Ralph Malph, right? No? He was a sidekick character on Happy Days. He palled around with Richie Cunningham and told a lot of bad jokes. He took a back seat when the Fonz became the most popular character on the show, went with Richie into the army briefly, then disappeared until the final episode of the show.

In politics, of course, the Fonz was Ronald Reagan. Kemp slowly faded into obscurity, as the guy with the thick waves of black hair shoved him out of the spotlight. He will only survive on as a tough question for the later quiz rounds of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?

[Stingo]

14. So who was

Pinky Tuscadero?

[tomreedtoon]

15. Pinky Tuscadero? Easy. Tammy Lee Bakker.

Not affiliated directly with the Bush/Reagan crowd, but there nevertheless. Very decorative, made lots of noise, sinister purpose underneath. And a walking joke, too.

[Stingo]

16. Not Palin?

[tomreedtoon]

19. No, Palin came after the Reagan years, remember?

We're talking people who might be contemporaries of Jack Kemp, and who helped elevate Ronald Reagan to sainthood, if not demigodhood. The only other important Republican female I can think of at the time was Anita Bryant and her hatred of gays, and in her decline she was certainly no Pinky Tuscadero.