The old Jack Kemp opposed kicking the children of illegal immigrants out of the nation’s public schools and denying them all but emergency public medical services. The new Jack Kemp favors both moves.
The old Jack Kemp believed the time to dismantle affirmative action had not yet arrived because some Americans still need a helping hand to offset discrimination and disadvantage. The new Jack Kemp is ready to abandon those programs.
One other difference between the old and the new Kemps: the new one is a vice-presidential nominee. As such, hewing to even his long-held positions has taken a back seat to melding his stand with that of his running mate, Bob Dole.
Over the last three days, Kemp has made an abrupt shift on two positions of principle–immigration and affirmative action–submerging his views to those of the party at large and its nominee. In so doing, critics say he is undermining his very reason for being on the Republican ticket.
As Dole’s No. 2, Kemp is supposed to be the man who can broaden his party’s appeal. If the moderates of the Republican Party and the American public hold reservations about the rightward movement of GOP activists, Kemp’s presence on the ticket is supposed to be a talisman of reassurance.
If the party is tainted by the perception it has failed to embrace minorities, for instance, Kemp can dispute that by pointing to the minority friends and supporters he has from his days in the National Football League and his years trying to bring businesses to decaying urban areas and home ownership to the residents of decrepit public housing complexes.
But in the five days since Dole chose Kemp as his running mate, the former New York congressman, housing secretary and professional football player has been busy changing long-held views, then defending his shift by saying he still intends to champion civil rights.
On Tuesday night, Rep. Susan Molinari, the convention’s keynote speaker, derided President Clinton for holding political views that have “the life span of a Big Mac on Air Force One.” Over the next few weeks, look for Democrats to use a scathing variant of the same line against Kemp.
Two years ago, Kemp and former Education Secretary William Bennett angered conservatives with their staunch public opposition to Proposition 187, the California citizens’ ballot initiative that denied most government services to illegal immigrants and their children.
Kemp warned that one provision, removing children of illegal immigrants from public schools, would result in “a mandate for ethnic discrimination” and would institute “a highly intrusive Big Brother” requirement on teachers who would be obligated to turn in their students.
Yet in interviews and speeches this week, Kemp said he now supports expelling the children of illegal immigrants from public schools.
Until he won the vice-presidential nod, Kemp repeatedly had argued with passion that the time had not yet come to repeal affirmative action. This week, Kemp told a wildly cheering California Republican delegation race-based quotas and programs based on race must be replaced.
When a reporter asked about his flip-flop on the issue Wednesday afternoon, Kemp retorted that only that reporter believes he has switched positions on the subject.
“Clinton wants to mend it,” he said of affirmative action programs. “I want to replace it.”
Access to capital, better jobs and more education will form “the new chapter in the civil rights movement,” he said.
Kemp’s new views are intended to avoid angering the party’s influential conservatives. He had already won their fealty on the GOP’s single most divisive issue, abortion, which he opposes, and on a large tax cut, which he long has championed.
His changes in position, of course, did not escape the attention of the Republicans’ opposition this week. The Democratic Party of Illinois, for instance, called the switches “yet another example of how the extremists of the Republican Party continue to rule Bob Dole’s campaign.”
In an interview Tuesday, Kemp told the Los Angeles Times, “Whatever we do in California, I promise you Bob Dole and Jack Kemp are not going to be divisive, we are not going to use wedge issues.”
But in that interview and in appearances throughout Wednesday, Kemp made it clear that he would no longer take stances that differ from Dole’s on the very issues that have been identified as “wedge issues,” especially in California.
Campaign handlers carefully orchestrated Kemp’s appearances Wednesday, so reporters were not able to question him in depth about his abrupt change on the two politically volatile issues.
At one point, Kemp borrowed the favorite question-avoidance technique of former President Ronald Reagan–cupping a hand behind his ear, as if he could not hear the questioners.
In speeches, Kemp made light of the many policy differences he has had with his running mate over the years. In a confessional tone, he told California Republicans of the team’s central dispute, saying, “He’s for the Chiefs to go to the Super Bowl, and I’m for the Chargers, 49ers and the Buffalo Bills.”
