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In his last years, former Rep. Jack Kemp of New York, the ebullient and eclectic conservative who died last weekend, was more revered than consulted within the Republican Party.

Kemp always held a place of honor among conservatives as a driving force behind President Reagan's supply-side income-tax cuts. But his personal influence in the GOP peaked during the Reagan years.

In that era, Kemp embodied two epic changes in the Republican Party. One was a shift in the GOP's economic priorities. Traditionally, eliminating the federal deficit had been the party's top economic goal; Kemp led the insurrection that dethroned what he invariably called "green-eyeshade Republicans" and shifted the party's focus from balancing the budget to cutting taxes. Representing a blue-collar district that included Buffalo, the onetime star quarterback also helped pioneer the Republican advance among working-class white voters, the so-called Reagan Democrats who reshaped the GOP coalition. With less success, Kemp tried to guide the GOP down another new path, urging it to court minority communities with an economic empowerment agenda that he described as "compassionate conservatism" long before George W. Bush made the phrase famous.

To his many admirers, Kemp initially seemed to be Reagan's logical heir apparent. But Kemp wasn't a strong organizer or disciplined campaigner. (His speeches made Joe Biden sound terse.) And when he sought the GOP presidential nomination in 1988, he never threatened then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, the eventual winner. The elder Bush chose Kemp as his Housing and Urban Development secretary but largely ignored his ideas for reviving inner cities through tax breaks and other incentives -- until the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles sent the administration frantically searching for an urban agenda.

After the elder Bush left office, Kemp often seemed estranged from the ideologically sharp-elbowed congressional Republican Party that emerged under Newt Gingrich and later Tom DeLay. Kemp had attracted blue-collar voters by stressing optimistic themes of opportunity and was deeply committed to minority outreach. He recoiled whenever his party turned toward lacerating, racially tinged wedge issues. "When he talked about Republicans as 'the party of Lincoln,' he really meant it," said veteran GOP strategist Peter Wehner.

Conservative thinker Jeff Bell, a longtime Kemp adviser, remembers him personally asking Reagan to stop talking about the (mythical) "Chicago welfare queen." Kemp was one of the few national Republicans who opposed Proposition 187, then-Gov. Pete Wilson's 1994 California ballot initiative to deny almost all public services to illegal immigrants. Kemp bristled at punitive welfare reform proposals and calls to try more juveniles as adults. "The party is coming dangerously close to being portrayed as [if] all we want is little government and big prisons," he lamented to me in 1994. "People want ... a bigger vision of America."

Kemp briefly regained the spotlight in 1996 when Bob Dole selected him as his vice presidential nominee. In 2000, George W. Bush echoed some of Kemp's inclusive themes (even dubbing himself a compassionate conservative). But in office, Bush tilted toward a more partisan governing strategy, and the Kemp echoes faded, as did Kemp's visibility.

Experience has not rewarded Kemp's faith in tax cuts as the best source of broadly shared prosperity. The median income increased more rapidly, and the poverty rate fell much faster, in the eight years after President Clinton raised taxes than they did in the eight years after Reagan signed Kemp's signature tax cuts. After the younger Bush signed another round of Kemp-style tax cuts in 2001, the poverty rate actually rose and the median income stagnated over the next seven years.

Both Republicans and Democrats can learn more from Kemp's commitment to inclusion. One of his core convictions was that his party could -- and should -- compete for every voter. He did not believe that attracting traditionally Democratic constituencies, such as minority voters, required Republicans to accept Democratic ideas. But he recognized that it required the GOP "to adapt conservative beliefs to the needs of those communities," as Bell wrote. Kemp understood that the best leaders cast wide nets. In a warm-spirited open letter last November, Kemp celebrated President Obama's victory as a "transformational" racial breakthrough and urged both parties to stress "the things that unite us irrespective of our political party, our race, or our socioeconomic background." Kemp saw politics as a way of razing walls, not raising them, and for that above all, his uniquely American voice will be missed.