Paul Ryan isn’t running for president in 2016, but that’s not stopping him from attempting to set the agenda for his Republican party, or from trying to prevent its eventual nominee from repeating the mistakes his running mate, Mitt Romney, made four years ago.
Even before the 2012 nominee’s infamous “47 percent” remark, Ryan had grown immensely frustrated with Romney’s brain trust for not allowing him to visit urban areas to discuss poverty, as his mentor, Jack Kemp, had done in decades past. Haunted by that experience, and by the branding of the GOP as insensitive and uncompassionate, Ryan set out quietly after the November loss to immerse himself in the issue. Away from cameras and reporters, he toured the nation’s poorest neighborhoods and consulted experts on the successes and failures of the 50-year-old War on Poverty, resolving to return to Washington and bring the issue to the fore.
The culmination of those efforts was visible Saturday morning, in a ballroom here in the South Carolina capital, as Ryan teamed with Tim Scott, the state’s junior senator, to host a discussion on poverty with six presidential candidates in a forum sponsored by the Jack Kemp Foundation....
Trump, notably, declined Ryan’s invitation to attend Saturday’s forum — as did the other leading Republican candidate, Ted Cruz. But many of the GOP contenders did come: Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Ben Carson, and Mike Huckabee. (Carly Fiorina was confirmed for the event but missed her flight to South Carolina.) Their attendance heartened Ryan and Scott, who presented themselves as the leaders of a forward-looking Republican party who could not help but view Saturday’s event as a new theater in the struggle for its soul.
The uniqueness of the gathering was significant and self-evident: Unlike dozens of cattle calls large and small for Republican candidates over the past year, the audience here looked something like America, with black and brown faces, plenty of them youthful, peppered throughout. The format was distinctive as well: Rather than sticking candidates behind a lectern for 20 minutes of talking points, Ryan and Scott sat them down on stage for freewheeling chats on several panels, neutralizing (at least somewhat) the tendency to tackle questions with 60-second sound bites....
Interestingly, during the final panel, both Rubio and Kasich offered more explicitly political cases related to remaking the Republican party in the image of an inclusive, aspirational America. Kasich expressed dismay at the removal of the Muslim woman from Trump’s rally; Rubio said at one point, “It’s good that the Republican party has candidates running for president like John Kasich, whose father was a mailman, and my father, who was a bartender.”
It was a plain political observation, one that hinted at glaring realities that undergirded Saturday’s proceedings: Republicans are viewed by many Americans as hostile to minorities and callous toward the poor. Ryan knows this better than most — having run a national campaign in 2012 and witnessing up close the damage done to his party’s brand — yet he labored to avoid casting Saturday’s proceedings as a narrowly focused electoral exercise. But that didn’t stop others from pointing out the obvious. Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute and Ryan’s close friend, told the audience of studies that show a ten-point swing toward the GOP when Republicans promote and demonstrate two essential human attributes: empathy and compassion....
