There's One Big Problem With The GOP's New 'Compassionate Conservatism'

AP

The Republican National Committee embarked this week on a major branding overhaul aimed at dispelling the perception that the party "does not care about people."

"Our ideas can sound distant and removed from people’s lives. Instead of connecting with voters’ concerns, we too often sound like bookkeepers," the committee wrote in its Growth and Opportunity report, released Monday. "We need to do a better job connecting people to our policies."

The report continues:

"Our job as Republicans is to champion private growth so people will not turn to the government in the first place. But we must make sure that the government works for those truly in need, helping them so they can quickly get back on their feet. We should be driven by reform, eliminating, and fixing what is broken, while making sure the government’s safety net is a trampoline, not a trap.

As Ada Fisher, the Republican National Committeewoman from North Carolina, told us, “There are some people who need the government.”

BuzzFeed's Ben Smith notes that the report's recommendations signal a return to the vision of "compassionate conservatism" championed by George W. Bush, which promised to combine conservative principles with genuine caring for the poor and disadvantaged.

Significantly, however, the RNC report stops short of articulating any specific policy prescriptions that might help Republicans overcome the empathy gap. While the report explains why the party is struggling, it fails to solve the more important problem of how Republicans can overcome its problems, particularly at the policy level.

At issue is the GOP's current myopic focus on deficit reduction and government spending cuts, which, more often than not, involves dramatically scaling back social programs. In contrast, "compassionate conservatives" embraced for federal spending for social programs, funneling that money into private charities and organizations, rather than government agencies.

This fundamental contradiction has made it virtually impossible for conservatives today to come up with a set of federal policy proposals that would make the party more palatable to the poor.

And the result is that an overwhelming majority of Americans — 68 percent — believe that the Republican Party favors the rich, according to a new CNN poll released Monday.

The RNC report is not the only Republican attempt to grapple with this issue. Since the 2012 election, a number of national GOP leaders — including House Majority leader Eric Cantor and Govs. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) and Scott Walker (R-Wisc.) — have called for the party to end its myopic focus on the federal budget and craft a more aspirational message. In a speech to conservative donors and fundraisers at CPAC last weekend, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush called for Republicans to stop being the "anti-everything party."

"It is not a validation of our conservative principles if we can only point to the increasingly rare individual who overcomes adversity and succeeds in America," Bush said. "Here’s reality: if you’re fortunate enough to count yourself among the privileged, much of the rest of the nation is drowning."

But beyond praising Republican successes at the state level, Bush and other Republicans have also failed to come up with federal policies to accompany that new message.

Moreover, the "compassionate conservative" message failed to resonate with the crowd of movement conservatives, indicating that despite the best efforts by Republican consultants, the party base is unlikely to reembrace the "big-government conservative policies" of the Bush years.

"I was surprised — I thought he fell flat," one prominent conservative donor said of Bush's speech. "It was like he didn't even know who he was speaking to."