Bill
Here's a link to Paul Ryans's speech at the Jack Kemp Leadership Award dinner, introducing Marco Rubio, this year's winner. If one were listening to the the 1st ten minutes (the election comments excepted) coming out of the mouth of say, Cory Booker or our newly minted senator, Chris Murphy, one wouldn't know that the speech was being given by one of the country's leading conservative thinkers and rising political stars. The fact that Ryan, (and Rubio in his speech accepting the award) chose to ficus on the poor is noteworthy in itself. The moments when Ryan insisted upon the need to seek bipartisan solutions to the country's problems felt eerily reminiscent of another slim, handsome politician from the Midwest who not that long ago asked us to set aside our differences and work together.
But other than the predictable condemnations of government driven efforts and proclamation of their failure, followed by the the usual paens to faith, family and community, I didn't hear much in the way of innovative solutions.
It may well be true that poverty, or the distintegration of the social fabric of the working class, or the growing gap between haves and have nots, are problems that cannot be solved from the top down. But they can't be solved by mouthing platitudes in an effort to make one's self and one's party appear more mainstream either.
Eli
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