I, too, worked for Kemp, in my case at George H.W. Bush’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), where Kemp was secretary. It is safe to say that if one were exposed at close range to Kemp’s combination of ebullient personality and powerful message one could not help but emerge thinking of him as an intellectual mentor. Here was the guy who, in partnership with Ronald Reagan, imagined the Republican Party not as, in Reagan’s words, a “pale pastel” imitation of liberalism but rather as a “bold color” champion of conservative principle. Free markets, economic opportunity, a strong foreign policy designed to send the Soviet Union and Communism to the “ash heap of history” rather than co-exist with it—these were Kemp hallmarks. Along with a consistent and repeated outreach to minorities, Kemp’s message never wavered, no matter his audience.

Ryan follows this path. Along with another Kemp friend, civil rights leader Robert Woodson, Ryan has been out there in inner-city neighborhoods on a Kemp-style listening tour. His staff, reports the Washington Post, “has been trolling center-right think tanks and intellectuals for ideas to replace the ‘bureaucratic, top-down anti-poverty programs’ that Ryan blames for ‘wrecking families and communities’ since Lyndon B. Johnson declared a war on poverty in 1964.”

So far, so Kemp.