Not 17 seconds into his keynote address at the Heritage Action policy summit Wednesday, Speaker Paul Ryan invoked his mentor, the late New York congressman Jack Kemp.
Ryan’s speech hit on a theme that has become familiar during his short time atop the House Republican conference: repairing the conference’s fissures to unite members — and ultimately the GOP nominee — around an agenda that rejects “anger” as its driving force. And his consistent nods to Kemp, whose name is still synonymous with “compassionate conservatism,” gave weight to that message: By rejecting the kind of internecine warfare playing out on the presidential campaign trail, he argued, the House could put a softer, more reform-minded vision of the party into action — and maximize its chances of winning in November.
“My theory of the case is this,” Ryan said. “We win an ideas contest; we lose a personality contest.”
“We need to be inspirational. We need to be inclusive. . . . We cannot fall into the progressives’ trap of acting like angry reactionaries,” he said. “The left would love nothing more than for a fragmented conservative movement to stand in a circular firing squad and fire.”
Others at the policy summit were of a similar mind. “Recently, we’ve heard a lot about the term ‘anger,’” said North Carolina representative Mark Walker, who spoke on the topic of civil society. “Let me tell you folks, in my opinion, it’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to talk about what needs to be done. . . . But it has to be focused in the right direction. . . . Not only is it important to be discerning, but you also want to be compassionate.”
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Like Ryan, Walker refrained from referencing the presidential race explicitly. But before citing First Corinthians, the North Carolinian, a Baptist minister, couldn’t resist oblique nod to the now-infamous ‘Two Corinthians’ gaffe committed by Donald Trump in a speech at Liberty University last month.
Mere seconds into his own keynote address on economic opportunity, however, Nebraska senator Ben Sasse named names.
“Donald Trump has recently named me the gym rat of the U.S. Senate,” he said to a score of laughter from the audience. “I think this is high praise.” (Sasse, through an impromptu Twitter manifesto on the damage Trump is doing to conservatism, has lately found himself in the real-estate mogul’s crosshairs.)
‘My theory of the case is this,’ Ryan said. ‘We win an ideas contest; we lose a personality contest.’
The rest of his speech struck a more stoic tone, as he argued that the current GOP electorate has been infected by the “tribalism” of the left, where “identity politics” and sound bites centered on race, class, and gender reign supreme.
The collective tone felt light years away from New Hampshire, where the party’s presidential contenders are now bloodying one another with sharp invective and vicious attack ads. On Wednesday, in a since-deleted tweet, Trump accused Cruz of “stealing” a victory in Iowa. And Ben Carson, whose team fired back at Cruz for suggested that he was suspending his campaign, held a press conference to denounce the Texas senator’s “deceptive Iowa-caucus tactics.”
#share#But while the Heritage audience, comprised mainly of elderly white men and women, nodded along throughout the day as Ryan and others called for the party to remake itself in a more positive image, some panel-members argued against Ryan, saying his was not the best strategy for sparking true conservative change in the short term.
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Appearing on a panel moderated by The Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes, South Carolina representative Mick Mulvaney, a leader of the House Freedom Caucus, asked audience members if any of them had attended a Trump rally. None of them had done so, and Mulvaney urged them to.
“You should go. Go,” Mulvaney said, if only to recognize the folks in Trump’s crowds — the “off-duty law enforcement officer” and the “local banker” — “who are supposed to be our base.” They are the ones, he said, who GOP leadership should be speaking to. “The speech Donald Trump gave was aspirational. . . . And it was positive.”
#related#“We agree with [Speaker Paul Ryan] 100% on the agenda,” said another Freedom Caucus leader, Raul Labrador. “But think of the caucus in Iowa. Over 63 percent of the people voted for an outsider because they are fed up with what’s happening in Washington. . . . We need to wake up to that reality. If we don’t, we’re not going to be able to do any of the things that Paul is talking about.”
Labrador and Mulvaney, speaking just hours after Ryan had concluded his address, put into stark relief the battle now being waged for the GOP’s future: Those conservatives who want a revolutionary approach to reshaping the party versus those with a reform agenda designed to grow the tent. Kemp was one of the latter, and Ryan has followed in his footsteps. The question remains whether the party’s presidential nominee, whomever he is, will choose to do so, as well.
— Elaina Plott is a William F. Buckley Fellow in Political Journalism at the National Review Institute.