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 Chastened by the 2012 election loss and Republican hopeful Mitt
Romney's comments that the lower-income "47 percent" of America
would never support him, party leaders wanted to show that they, not
just Democrats, cared about poverty.
But candidates such as Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Marco Rubio, who
can talk in great detail about policies which they say prove
conservatism creates opportunity for all Americans, have seen their
economic plans overshadowed in a noisy Republican campaign.
With immigration and national security leading the Republicans'
national debates, and outsider candidates like Donald Trump grabbing
attention, the conservative anti-poverty effort has been shunted
aside.
Republican leaders worried about broadening their base, as well as
conservative policy experts, hope to change the narrative on
Saturday, when more than half of the Republican pack seeking the
White House is set to participate in a poverty forum in South
Carolina.
 "If we are going to be successful at the ballot box, so to speak, we
are going to have to make sure that our conversation encompasses the
whole of America," said the state's Republican U.S. senator, Tim
Scott, who will moderate the event along with House of
Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan.
The forum is sponsored by the Jack Kemp Foundation, named for the
late Republican lawmaker who called himself a “bleeding heart”
conservative due to his work on housing, welfare and other poverty
programs.
Kemp was a mentor to Ryan, a proud budget wonk and vice presidential
candidate four years ago who has since released his own anti-poverty
agenda.
ANTI-POVERTY POLICIES
Often unnoticed amid the debate among Republicans over illegal
immigration and terrorism, some of the current crop of candidates
are putting forward details of how they would fight poverty,
claiming liberal attempts to help the poor have not worked.
Bush, the former Florida governor, on Friday unveiled a new welfare
reform proposal ahead of the South Carolina forum as part of his
campaign to win the Republican nomination for the Nov. 8 election.
Rubio, a U.S. senator from Florida, who often talks about his modest
upbringing with a bartender father and a mother who worked as a
maid, proposed a new tax credit for families with children.
Ohio Governor Kasich said in announcing his bid for the White House
that he would work on behalf of drug addicts, mentally ill and poor
people.
Republicans have touted plans to reform vocational training or
higher education in the party's televised debates, but the most
recent televised encounter focused on national security. There was
almost no mention of the poor.
The five top Republicans in Reuters/Ipsos opinion polls - Trump,
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Rubio and
Bush - have television ads on immigration, terrorism and their
backgrounds, but not explicitly about poverty.
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SHORT ON DETAILS
When poverty does come up, policy details can be light.
Cruz, asked about entitlement programs in Spencer, Iowa, responded
that the safety net should look like "trampolines and not hammocks,"
with work requirements for welfare.
Then he pivoted to partisan politics. "I thank God some well-meaning
liberal didn't come put his arm around my dad as a teenage
immigrant," said Cruz, whose father was born in Cuba.
Jimmy Kemp, Jack Kemp’s son and head of the foundation, said
candidates had been forced to respond to voters’ concerns about
terrorism. The economy and unemployment were Americans’ top concerns
for much of 2015, until terrorism worries spiked late in the year,
according to Reuters/Ipsos polling.
Americans' frustration with politicians was also evident in the
public's skepticism about Washington's ability to fix their
problems. Trump’s ideas about bringing back manufacturing jobs to
America represented more of a “trust me” approach than substantive
policy, Kemp said.
"People may kind of just think that we’re going to have a government
by executive order going forward, and so maybe they’re thinking,
well, we might as well have somebody like Mr. Trump in there," Kemp
said.
In 2012, voters said in one poll that Obama cared more about people
like them than did Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, by
a margin of 81 percent to 18.
"Who cares more about people like you? That's how Romney lost that
to Barack Obama," said Arthur Brooks, president of the American
Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
After the 2012 loss, Ryan responded with a tour of inner cities,
organized with the help of Bob Woodson of the Center for
Neighborhood Enterprise, who advocates for putting more power in the
hands of poor communities.
Generally a supporter of Republicans, Woodson said the South
Carolina forum is an opportunity to prod candidates to spend more
time in poor neighborhoods and speak out more on the issue.
"Most people have some brokenness in their family," he said, adding
they want to know what politicians will do for the least of these.
(Additional reporting by Michelle Conlin; Editing by Caren Bohan and
Alistair Bell)
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