From left: Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI)
Last week Donald Trump met with Jack Kemp protégé House Speaker Paul Ryan. As the Washington Post aptly put it, “Ryan has the House. Trump has the party.” To quote the founder of the Republican Party, Abe Lincoln, who was quoting Scripture: “A house divided against itself can not stand.”
This meeting was an iconic moment that distilled the dynamics and douleurs of GOP 2016 perfectly. The modern GOP is the House That Jack — Jack Kemp — Built. That House is in disarray.
Jack Kemp championed, and inspired presidential aspirant Ronald Reagan to adopt, the economic formula that rescued America from decades of stagflation. Kemp unleashed an era of epic world prosperity.
[…]
Begin with an across-the-board reduction of marginal tax rates, now in the hands of Kemp acolytes and trusted Ryan and Trump advisors Kudlow and Moore. Conjoin it with the resurrection, far easier than Speaker Ryan or Mr. Trump may think, of Jack Kemp’s Gold Standard Act of 1984.
Ryan’s chief of staff Dave Hoppe, once upon a time Kemp’s chief of staff, was a key architect of the Gold Standard Act, together with Lehrman and former Kemp economist John Mueller. Together the tax rate cut plus gold standard hold the essence of Kemp’s recipe for prosperity and justice for all.
Fuse Trump’s intuitive grasp of the spirit of equitable prosperity with Ryan’s fine-tuned grasp of the way the world works and critical mass is achieved to the benefit of both and of America. The Kemp recipe for growth with fairness, a value both men share, is the great opportunity to unify the GOP and win this fall.
After their meeting Paul Ryan and Donald Trump jointly stated:
While we were honest about our few differences, we recognize that there are also many important areas of common ground. We will be having additional discussions, but remain confident there’s a great opportunity to unify our party and win this fall, and we are totally committed to working together to achieve that goal.
Will Donald Trump prove to be the man capable of dramatically resurrecting the Kemp legacy of economic growth with economic justice? Will Paul Ryan hand Donald Trump the means of giving credibility to his pledge to become “the greatest jobs president that God ever created?”
Ralph Benko, internationally published weekly columnist, co-author of The 21st Century Gold Standard, lead co-editor of the Gerald Malsbary translation from Latin to English of Copernicus’s Essay on Money, is American Principles Project’s Senior Advisor, Economics.
