Just a day after House Speaker Paul Ryan endorsed Donald Trump for president, he began his effort to define his party’s policy agenda in the election cycle, a job usually reserved for the party’s presidential nominee.
On Friday, Ryan gave a sneak peak of “a better way,” his six-part policy initiative to show the American people what Republicans stand for. Beginning next week, Ryan will roll out policy plans to target issues from poverty to tax reform. The plans are not intended to be legislation that the GOP-controlled Congress actually votes on. Instead, they are supposed to give voters a sense of what Republicans stand for (again something that usually becomes very clear with the top of the ticket message.)
Even before Trump was declared the presumptive nominee, Ryan planned to release the aggressive policy agenda. Yet, the project seems to have taken on greater significance now that the policy disagreements between Trump and Ryan on everything from trade to entitlement reform have illuminated themselves. Ryan is about to introduce specifics at a time that the GOP’s nominee speaks in vague, catchy one-liners.
In a video Ryan released Friday, the speaker promises that now the Republican Party is going to give the American people a plan that lets them know what the GOP stands for instead of just talking about what the party is against.
“We can get angry and we can stay angry or we can channel that anger into action,” Ryan said in his video.
“We don’t give into division,” Ryan said in the video. “We find a better way.”
Ryan it seems is beginning his fight to preserve the conservatism he believes should be at the center of the party’s identity just as Trump is redefining what it means to be a Republican.This week Ryan and Trump officially came together to unite the party, but these policy papers will likely reveal their visions to be very different still.
