RIP Jack Kemp

I cannot help but have a soft spot for the man who guided my Buffalo Bills to not one, but two AFL championships. On the political front, Kemp will leave a mixed legacy. He was an ardent supporter of his party's embrace of supply side economics. This turned out to be an economic and moral calamity. Supply side practitioners left the rich richer, the poor poorer, and our federal budget in a shambles. On the positive side, this "bleeding heart conservative" championed civil rights in a way very few Republicans ever have, even to this day. (Kemp founded the AFL's player association and knew the potent power of racism. He understood this was not yesterday's problem.) At times he paid a price for parting with his GOP colleagues as when he was one of the very few GOP legislators to embrace sanctions against South Africa. For much of the 1980s, what little moral credibility the Republican Party had on the issue of race, it owed to Kemp.