House Speaker Paul Ryan has had a tough month. After initially keeping his distance from Donald Trump, he came around to saying he would vote for the Republican nominee. On the same day, Trump made headlines with comments declaring that a judge was unfit, by virtue of his parents’ Mexican nationality, to preside over a case involving alleged fraud at Trump University. The comments, which drew fire even from previous Trump endorsers and supporters like Sen. Marco Rubio and Newt Gingrich, surely couldn’t have been the sort of message Ryan envisioned for his endorsement day.
But this week Ryan sought to take the narrative back. Billed as the first plank in a six-plank agenda aimed at showing how conservative principles can lead to a more “confident America”, the 35-page document outlines ways that Ryan hopes the House of Representatives will be able to push for reforms to programs that too long have made it hard for people to move up out of poverty.
The Speaker’s ambitious proposal involves doing a better job measuring outcomes to ensure that programs are actually helping the people they are supposed to help. It also focuses on ensuring incentives are aligned so that people who can work are able to participate in the workforce and lift themselves up.
Ryan’s message matters. In a world where many voters – particularly young voters – no longer think that hard work will help you get ahead in America, people are looking for someone to outline how we can all move up in a system that feels rigged against the average person.
For too long, I’ve walked into focus group after focus group and heard thoughtful voters tell me that they view the Republican Party as uncaring, focused on keeping the rich richer and the poor poorer. I know this is light-years away from why I chose to join the Republican Party. Perhaps most eloquently articulated in Arthur Brooks’ The Conservative Heart, the moral case for conservatism and markets as an incredible vehicle for lifting people out of poverty is a powerful one.
I also believe that Ryan’s message is one that could go a long way to repairing the Republican Party’s fortunes with key voter groups. Many Republicans joined the party because they love the Constitution, believe in federalism or want to cut spending, among other reasons. But lots of voters including middle-class voters, might be with the GOP if they thought Republicans cared about people like them and others who are deserving of help.
As I learned in recent research on young voters, rolled out last week, most young voters have never heard a Republican talk the way Speaker Ryan talks about these issues. Their initial reaction was, of course, skepticism, wondering “is he for real?” But by making this a cornerstone initiative rather than talking-point fluff, Ryan has an opportunity to start driving the point home to new voter groups that even if all the budget-cutting doesn’t get you excited, caring for your fellow man sure might.
I think Ryan’s message is what the GOP needs. But I have no illusions that by rolling out 35 pages of plank one of a six-plank agenda, voters will pour in like droves. Ryan has tried to stake out the position that his agenda matters most, and that he’ll support whichever candidate is most likely to help him achieve his agenda. That’s all well and good, but it strikes me as unlikely that Donald Trump will be the biggest champion of Ryan’s ideas.
One of the hurdles Ryan will have to surmount is a communications hurdle. Tell someone you have a 12-point plan and you may as well tell him nothing. Mitt Romney had a 59-point plan to save the American economy, entitled Believe in America. I remember reading it during the 2012 election and being glad that we had a nominee who was thinking carefully about things like the implications of a territorial tax system.
In contrast, Donald Trump’s agenda is whatever he wants it to be that day. He’s the master of the sound-bite. He’s the king of the quote and knows how to reshape a whole news cycle with a tweet. Even at the press conference Tuesday about the roll-out of the Ryan plan, the first question asked? All about Trump.
The graveyard of the 2016 election is littered with policy papers and agendas: Jeb Bush’s education agenda, Rubio’s energy policy speeches, “The Kasich Action Plan.” Donald Trump’s candidacy has not eliminated the policy value of the multipoint, multiplank plan. But it has blown up the idea that these are the things that sway hearts and minds. They may be necessary to govern, but are inadequate as a communications strategy. This does not mean that everyone needs a cute slogan or quippy sales pitch; rather, it means that being simple, concrete and clear matters.
Voters may well hear Ryan’s message and think, skeptically, “I’ve never heard a Republican talk like that before.” And so, Ryan will ultimately need to make this about more than words. That said, in the short run, he will need to do all he can to prove that yes, Republicans do talk like that, and think like that, and that ultimately they do have the ideas to help millions of people get ahead.
Kristen Soltis Anderson is a columnist for the Washington Examiner and author of “The Selfie Vote.”
