Can Senator Mike Lee redefine the conservative movement?

With criticism coming at him fast and furious for his role in the federal government shutdown, Utah Senator Mike Lee is plowing ahead to define himself on his own terms. As the talking heads and media outlets nationwide were predicting his demise in 2016, Lee took to the podium at the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday with a speech that purports to begin to redefine the modern conservative movement.

Senator Mike Lee of Utah was the most obvious beneficiary of the Tea Party’s dethroning of Bob Bennett in 2010, and to hear self-described members of the Tea Party talk, he has largely kept his campaign promises.

But not without a cost. The Count My Vote initiative–an effort to replace Utah’s unique caucus convention system with an open primary–is widely seen as the result of the efforts of disenchanted Bennett supporters. Further, although County My Vote organizers deny it as their purpose, the conventional thinking is that Lee will be more easily unseated in an open primary than a Republican Party convention of statewide delegates.

Meanwhile, Lee is plowing ahead, setting the stage to define his first term in office on his own terms and taking steps to show that he is more than an obstructionist, but can produce ideas sculpted to consider the needs of middle class families. In the last two days, he has released two pieces of legislation that he argues will support that end.

In a speech titled “What’s next for conservatives” at the Heritage Foundation, Lee described an agenda for reform, rather than revolution.

Even Jennifer Rubin, a Washington Post columnist who has occasionally critical of Lee, was compelled to “applaud, albeit with a few reservations, what appears to be a new, more constructive effort.” Further, regarding the speech, “[i]t is the closest he has come to a critique of the right-wing and of the shutdown itself, calling on his party to “step back” and assess where they are headed.”

Ignoring, for a moment, even the content of the speech–a series of proposals that Lee hopes will provide practical solutions for helping the poor and middle-class–if Lee can continue to secure press that grants acknowledgement that he is part of a “constructive effort[,]” he will be well prepared to roll into 2016 with a reputation as more than one of the two senators who shut down the federal government in 2013.

By working to shift the debate in the Republican Party to the other marriage debate, “one concerning fatherless children, economic inequality and broken communities,” Lee is making an effort to move politics away from the loud few to the silent but much affected majority in the middle.

So what’s in the speech?

Senators Marco Rubio and Mike Lee meet with the press on Thursday morning during the 2012 National Republican Convention.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Lee opens with an attack on the Affordable Care Act and justification for the shutdown, quickly running through a history of the conservative movement and leaning upon conservative luminaries like Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, Jack Kemp, James Buckley, Henry Hyde, and Milton Friedman, as well as Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork and others.

However, elected Republicans have failed, says Lee, because unlike that earlier generation, while they have imitated, conservatives have not redefined what conservatism means for our time.

Instead of emulating those earlier conservatives, too many Republicans today mimic them – still advocating policies from a bygone age.

And this leads to the headline that was in today’s Salt Lake Tribune: “GOP squabbles help the party[.]” Lee argues that the debate going on in the Republican Party is important and necessary.

Yet as the decades pass and a new generation of Americans faces a new generation of problems, the party establishment clings to its 1970s agenda like a security blanket. The result is that to many Americans today, especially to the underprivileged and middle class, or those who have come of age or immigrated since Reagan left office the Republican Party may not seem to have much of a relevant reform message at all.

This is the reason the G.O.P. can seem so out of touch. And it is also the reason we find ourselves in such internal disarray.

The gaping hole in the middle of the Republican Party today – the one that separates the grassroots from establishment leaders – is precisely the size and shape of a new, unifying conservative reform agenda.

[…]

It’s time for another Great Debate, and we should welcome all input.

That “Great Debate” needs to address three issues, says Lee:

“Immobility among the poor, trapped in poverty;
“Insecurity in the middle class, where families just can’t seem to get ahead; and
“Cronyist privilege at the top, where political and economic elites unfairly profit at everyone else’s expense.”

These might be summed up as addressing poverty, a weak economy, and, well, corruption.

To address poverty, Lee argues that solutions need to transcend government welfare, and he cites Utah’s “enormously successful private welfare system led by churches, businesses, and community groups and volunteers.”

We understand that, as it is lived in America, freedom doesn’t mean you’re on your own. Freedom means we’re all in this together.

This agenda must include but also transcend welfare reform. Additionally, we need to reform education, housing, immigration, health care, and our criminal justice and

prison systems.

This new agenda must recognize that work for able-bodied adults is not a necessary evil, but an essential pathway to personal happiness and prosperity.

In addition to addressing poverty, Lee says the flat growth of middle class incomes must be addressed without further additional government programs, and here he returns to his shutdown crusade of repealing the Affordable Care Act.

Health care is one of the main reasons why the cost of living in the middle class is increasing too quickly for many Americans to keep up. At the same time, it is the main reason why government spending and debt are out of control.

The law the Democrats enacted on a party-line vote in 2010 is going to make both of those problems worse – accelerating healthcare costs both for families and the government.

At the same time, Obamacare poses very serious threats to our constitutional system, to the relationship between Washington and the states, to individual liberty and conscience rights, to the strength of our economy, and to the quality of our healthcare system.

That puts healthcare right at the center of what conservatives need to be thinking about. And it means our movement has to be intensely engaged not only in the fight to repeal, but in the debate to replace Obamacare.

Lee cited as Republican alternatives to Obamacare plans by Representatives Steve Scalise and Phil Roe and another by Representative Paul Ryan, as well as the Heritage Foundation’s Saving the American Dream Plan that Lee introduced to the Senate last year.

He also mentions four bills he was introducing to address various problems facing the American middle-class, including the cost of raising children, work-life balance, and the rising costs of and restricted access to quality higher education, two of which have been introduced since the speech.

In addition to his tax reform proposal, Lee also proposes, or reintroduced, bills that will allow more flexibility for working parents and increase spending for roads and infrastructure. Additionally, Lee proposes to allow the Department of Education to open up new educational options for students seeking federal aid.

Today, only degree-issuing academic institutions are even allowed to be accredited. Under the new, optional state systems that my bill would authorize, accreditation could also be available to specialized programs, individual courses, apprenticeships, professional credentialing, and even competency-based tests. States could accredit online courses, or hybrid models with elements on- and off-campus.

What’s notably missing from Lee’s speech, and proposals, are anything to address the national debt, entitlements (except for the repeal of Obamacare, something of a long-shot, to say the least, at this point), and immigration reform. In the past, Lee has gone from a member of the bipartisan group working on immigration reform to one of the major opponents of the current immigration proposal before the Senate. He has advocated for, rather than a large comprehensive immigration reform package, piecemeal reform packages that address each issue separately. This would have been a great time to address what some of those immigration reforms should look like.