Right Wisconsin picks up on a Washington Post story:

Paul Ryan is ready to move beyond last year’s failed presidential campaign and the budget committee chairmanship that has defined him to embark on an ambitious new project: Steering Republicans away from the angry, nativist inclinations of the tea party movement and toward the more inclusive vision of his mentor, the late Jack Kemp.

Since February, Ryan (R-Wis.) has been quietly visiting inner-city neighborhoods with another old Kemp ally, Bob Woodson, the 76-year-old civil rights activist and anti-poverty crusader, to talk to ex-convicts and recovering addicts about the means of their salvation.

Ryan’s staff, meanwhile, has been trolling center-right think tanks and intellectuals for ideas to replace the “bureaucratic, top-down anti-poverty programs” that Ryan blames for “wrecking families and communities” since Lyndon B. Johnson declared a war on poverty in 1964.

Next year, for the 50th anniversary of that crusade, Ryan hopes to roll out an anti-poverty plan to rival his budgetary Roadmap for America’s Future in scope and ambition. He is also writing a book about what’s next for the GOP, recalling the 1979 tome that detailed Kemp’s vision under the subtitle, “The Brilliant Young Congressman’s Plan for a Return to Prosperity.”

Ryan “has always been more than the budget guy. His vision is much broader than that,” said Bill Bennett, a conservative political theorist who worked with Kemp at Empower America, where Ryan got his start. “You can’t be the governing party unless you offer people a way out of poverty.” …
Advisers recall Ryan in workout clothes in a Des Moines Marriott, telling campaign officials in Boston that he had two requests: First, to meet the staff in person. And second, to travel to urban areas and speak about poverty.

No one said no. But with Romney focused relentlessly on Obama’s failure to improve the economy for middle-class Americans, the idea always seemed off-message. “We struggled to find the right timing to dovetail it into our messaging schedule,” Romney strategist Ed Gillespie said via e-mail.

Ryan adviser Dan Senor said Ryan argued that “47 million people on food stamps is an economic failure.” But Ryan did not get clearance to deliver a speech on poverty, his sole policy address, until two weeks before the election.

Ryan had “frustration during the campaign for obvious reasons. His message, which was more than jobs and business, was secondary, subsidiary. So you didn’t get the full Ryan,” said Bennett, who vacationed with Ryan and his family in Colorado this summer. When the campaign was over, Ryan found himself “wanting to say more about who he was and introducing that broader agenda.”

Right Wisconsin adds:

Conservatives ought to be encouraged and excited about the prospect of Ryan authoring and proposing an anti-poverty agenda that embraces volunteerism, service, opportunity, and prosperity rather than government dependence.

Despite the obvious failure of the liberal ‘War on Poverty,’ conservatives have largely avoided talking about poverty for the better part of 50 years. It is long overdue that conservatives engage this vital issue with ideas and compassion.

It’s been said for years that the War on Poverty and its now trillions of dollars in government spending has been as successful at alleviating poverty as spending no money at all would have been.