You are trying to figure out the lessons learned from your 2012 campaign and you have decided that “poverty” is the hot topic to show that you care. This is such a weird bipolar disorder that also afflicts other Republicans (like Paul Ryan). You spent your last campaign constantly talking about people who were much richer than the median American. Now, to show that you get it and are humane and stuff, you want to talk about people who are poorer than the median American. Wouldn’t it be just a lot easier to focus on people who are neither rich nor poor and build out from there? Wouldn’t it make more sense to talk to that largest fraction of Americans who consider themselves middle-class? That doesn’t mean never talk about the rich or the poor. It does mean that proportions and focus matter.

First, talk about the interests and anxieties of the middle class — and focus on the lower middle class. That means you should spend more time talking about a wage-earner’s worries about what will happen to her health insurance if she loses her job and has to take part-time work than about the student-loan obligations of a law-school graduate. Once again, it is about priorities. You should talk about making higher education and skills acquisition more affordable for everything from the trades to grad school, but you already did decently well among the upper middle class the last time you ran for president. This time around, you need to explain how conservative ideas on tax policy and health-insurance reform will improve the economic security and increase the take home pay of wage-earning parents. It would be a good idea to borrow the ideas of Marco Rubio and Mike Lee on tax policy and have some lengthy talks with James Capretta on health-insurance policy.

You should still talk about poverty, but it should be about more than poverty. It should be about helping those who are already in poverty, and Michael Strain has some interesting ideas, but, on one level, policy aimed at the lower middle class and (much of) the poor needs to be based on what Reihan Salam called the idea of conditional reciprocity. If you are willing to work hard, conservative policy will make your life better. It could be relocation vouchers to go to places where there are better job opportunities. It could be wage subsidies for low-paid entry-level jobs. It could be an expanded child-tax credit for middle-class working parents, and it could mean more secure and cheaper health insurance through a combination of health savings accounts and a tax credit for catastrophic health insurance.

Those in poverty are a diverse group who face different kinds of challenges. Nobody has all the answers for everybody. There is also another group who are not in poverty but who fear falling into poverty with a layoff notice or a car that gives out. Don’t make big promises about ending poverty. Nobody is going to believe you. Focus on policies that make poverty easier to avoid and easier to escape.

This is a chance to reverse the great error of your 2012 campaign. In your infamous “47 percent” comment, you talked about how 47 percent of the population did not have a net income-tax liability and how your tax program did not resonate with them. That part of your statement was true (not the part about those in the 47 percent not caring about their lives and such). But the problem was with your program and not with Americans on the other side of the earnings median.

The problem wasn’t created by your 47 percent comment. There is a reason why your poll numbers didn’t move much in the days after the 47 percent comment leaked. People had already gotten the message with all your talk about job creators who built that. If you can show how your policies can help Americans who are under the earning median but who are doing the right things (even though they might not want to start their own businesses), then you will have done a great service to your party, your country, and your presidential ambitions.

Please read Henry Olsen on the worldview of non-Evangelical working-class whites. These voters might be valuable allies against Jeb Bush. They aren’t going to like many of the details of your business background, and you have an image problem to say the least. All you an offer them is a studied appreciation of their values and their virtues and a set of policies that address their priorities. You aren’t really a natural fit for them, but you have experience ingratiating yourself with new constituencies, and Bush might be so blinkered by his donor-class view of the last election that he makes it easy. You will need a larger share of this group’s votes to win the general election in 2016. Heck, you need a larger share of this group to go to the polls rather than stay home in disgust.

But don’t try to ad lib any stuff to better identify with non-Evangelical working-class whites. That is when you really embarrass yourself. You are a smart, hardworking, transactional politician. So transact. Focus on a few policies that will address the priorities of this group, and work on some carefully prepared explanations. You are at your best when you deliver a well-honed, well-rehearsed argument. Don’t trust your instincts in this area. If you have some anecdotes you want to share, run them by your most harshly critical advisers before going public.

I’m glad that you are talking to Laura Ingraham about the American working class, but the demographics of the country are such that simply doing better among the white working class will not be enough to get you to a win in 2016. You were surprisingly weak among nonwhite voters in 2012.

That doesn’t mean you have to be the candidate of upfront amnesty and guest-worker programs. Let Jeb Bush be that candidate and hammer him relentlessly. It does mean that you need a story about the troubles of low-skill workers that crosses racial and ethnic lines, and an immigration strategy aimed at helping those low-skill workers (of all ethnicities) who are here now. That means being open to an amnesty, but only after the implementation of workplace verification and a visa-tracking system. It means that immigration reform means that future immigration is based on skills and English proficiency, as most Americans already want. it means that Romney-style immigration reform should be presented as being a part of a larger agenda to help struggling workers of all ethnicities.

I know it would be a big change. It would mean a new policy agenda. It would mean a great deal of time spent trying to understand the views of people who were left cold by your job-creator rhetoric. It would not be the first time you changed your agenda, and not the first time you went to school on the worldviews of constituencies you needed. The good news is that much of the sociological and policy work has already been done. The rest is up to you and the team you are putting together.