Jack Kemp’s presidential proto-candidacy is stalling out, some corridor gossips on Capitol Hill are saying. A six-month-old Free Congress Foundation poll showing that George Bush dwarfs Kemp among conservatives in both name recognition and favorable ratings is still being quoted. Kemp has also failed to put together an apparatus for grass-roots organizing and fundraising to match Bush’s.
On the platform, Kemp’s performances are erratic. “No question that Jack can give a stem-winder,” says a mainline GOP senator, “but you never know when.” In his speeches, Kemp routinely lays out ideas and formulas designed to make the Republican Party dominant. The GOP can become the permanent majority party, he contends, only if it reaches out to constituencies that Democrats have long taken for granted, especially blue-collar workers, urban ethnics, and blacks. His populist rhetoric exalts free enterprise, self-reliance, and equal opportunity. He urges expanded civil-rights protection and attacks South African apartheid, believing that such emphases will win potentially crucial black support in 1988, and show him to be the only GOP candidate who can siphon it.
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