Jack Kemp

Jack Kemp

Jack French Kemp (July 13, 1935 – May 2, 2009) was an American politician and a professional player in both American football and Canadian football. A member of the Republican Party from New York, he served as Housing Secretary in the administration of President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1993, having previously served nine terms in the United States House of Representatives from 1971 to 1989. He was the Republican Party's vice presidential nominee in the 1996 election, as the running mate of presidential nominee Bob Dole. Kemp had previously contended for the presidential nomination in the 1988 Republican primaries.

Quotes

• Conservatives define compassion not by the number of people who receive some kind of government aid but rather by the number of people who no longer need it. ^{[citation needed]}

• I think it is important for all those young out there, who someday hope to play real football, where you throw it and kick it and run with it and put it in your hands, a distinction should be made that football is democratic, capitalism, whereas soccer is a European socialist sport.
  • In a 1988 speech to the United States Congress, quoted by himself at Townhall.com

Quotes about Kemp

• This is a quality that has appeared often enough in American history — and outside America as well. Senators like Ted Kennedy have been prominent before, bearing names like Henry Clay or Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater and Hubert Humphrey. Governors like New York Republican Nelson Rockefeller or Alabama Democrat George Wallace. A Congressman like Jack Kemp. Non-office holders like Martin Luther King in the United States or Mohandas Gandhi in India or Nelson Mandela in South Africa (who later became president of his country) can, through sheer force of personality, come to dominate the political scene of the day without ever bearing a single official title.
  • Jeffrey Lord in Is Sarah Palin the Next Ted Kennedy? (1 September 2009)