Here is an interesting situation. Eric Cantor has been moving behind the scenes and showing up in Davos and such to test ideas about changing the GOP to make it more palatable.
Here’s the problem, Cantor is unpalatable to many if not most Americans. Listening to him as I have done at American Enterprise Institute events, one word emerges, “arrogant.”
He speaks about his family’s history, being Jewish and making it in Richmond, Virginia. That is an accomplishment deserving respect because that part of the world is known for bigotry of all kinds.
However, he missed some important points along the way. The American system of government gave his family opportunity. It also helped remove barriers.
Now, there is no doubt that he and his family represent hard working people who make their own success through self-determination, yet his family gave to Eric advantage that he inherited. Most people don’t have that.
So long as Republicans operate on a platform that fails to address how the system will produce a good life for all and more for some who deserve it, and so long as they seek to dismantle the services that accomplish this without a viable replacement, his words and tone will continue to sound harsh and unfair.
I agree with Eric that numbers will turn people off, unless the numbers demonstrate how people will be able to improve their own.
"“We are in a town run by Democrats, and we cannot win the hearts and minds of Americans if we are just talking about numbers, day in and day out,” said a Cantor aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss his boss’s plans. “There are a lot of things Republicans care about.”
After lying low for several months, Mr. Cantor is reasserting his presence in the Capitol, even as Speaker John A. Boehner continues his struggles to maintain Republican unity. In the coming weeks, the majority leader plans to lay out a second, softer track for his party beyond the constant cycle of budget showdowns and deficit talks.
Notably, that track will include a new push for private-school vouchers for underprivileged children, health care options beyond the old fight over the president’s health care law, new work force training initiatives and a renewed push for science, technology and engineering visas for would-be immigrants.
After successfully engineering the latest debt ceiling vote last week, Mr. Cantor flew to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he road-tested those themes as the lone House Republican leader rubbing elbows with the international elite.
Citing a struggling single mother with a gifted child in a poor city neighborhood, he told Davos attendees, “We need to create some type of competitive mechanisms” to help her escape the bad schools she is stuck with. Between meetings with King Abdullah II of Jordan; President Shimon Peres of Israel; the International Monetary Fund director, Christine Lagarde; and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations, he spoke of “sane immigration policies,” unemployed youths and a German model for economic output.
Mr. Cantor is expected to lay out his domestic vision on Feb. 5 at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right research group.""
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