miami someone has neglected to remove the most recent tear-sheet from an election calendar on the wall of congressman carlos curbelo <u+2019>s campaign office in a nondescript florida strip mall. this seems to indicate that there is one more day left until nov. 8 than there really is, which is one day too many. then again, time is on everyone<u+2019>s mind in the middle of paul ryan <u+2019>s rolling-thunder tour, as the house speaker travels to save republican majorities. mr. ryan will visit 45 cities in 17 states and do more than 100 events, and florida<u+2019>s 26th congressional district was a destination this week. fl-26, which stretches from southwest miami-dade county to the keys, is among the most contested in the nation and will help determine the balance of power in washington next year. the gop holds 246 seats of the 435-member house, democrats 186, with three vacancies, which means republicans can afford to lose no more than 29 to retain control. for a meet-and-greet at his phone bank, mr. curbelo introduces <u+201c>mr. speaker, paul<u+201d> to the mostly college-age volunteers. there are selfies. <u+201c>believe it or not, we have ideas. we have solutions,<u+201d> mr. ryan says, fishing a pocket copy of the gop<u+2019>s <u+201c>better way<u+201d> campaign agenda from his suit jacket. <u+201c>i always tell people, if you<u+2019>re just getting started in politics, forget about what you see on twitter and tv, and think about the ideas in this campaign.<u+201d> ideas haven<u+2019>t mattered in the joyless twilight struggle between donald trump and hillary clinton, not that mr. ryan hasn<u+2019>t tried to change the subject. one imagines his omnipresent copies of the <u+201c>better way<u+201d> brochure<u+2014>detailed reforms for the economy and national security<u+2014>spilling out of glove compartments and kitchen cabinets. he agreed to serve as speaker<u+2014>fewer than 365 days ago<u+2014>only on the condition that <u+201c>we will be a proposition party, offering an agenda,<u+201d> he said in an interview this week. he prefers to talk substance: <u+201c>i think at the end of the day that<u+2019>s the kind of campaign we should run from a moral standpoint but also from a strategic standpoint.<u+201d> the <u+201c>better way<u+201d> was developed by consensus within the gop conference, which is the largest since 1928. yet the possibility that the house could flip has gone from unrealistic a year ago to increasingly possible. the nonpartisan cook political report rates 57 house races as competitive. for most of the year house races had been relatively stable, but this month polling from oregon rep. greg walden <u+2019>s national republican congressional committee discovered an ominous downward trend after videotape emerged of mr. trump<u+2019>s colloquy with billy bush. mr. ryan concedes that political analysts can <u+201c>concoct a realistic scenario where our majority could be in jeopardy.<u+201d> he says he feels <u+201c>pretty confident that we<u+2019>re going to keep it, but it<u+2019>s going to be a bigger fight just given the headwinds we have, more or less<u+201d> and <u+201c>my level of urgency is never take anything for granted.<u+201d> mr. curbelo is a portrait of the stakes. the son of cuban exiles and a former miami school-board member, the freshman has carved out an independent profile and concentrated on education and antipoverty. as he toured elementary schools with mr. ryan this week, he showcased the every student succeeds act, which gave students learning english more time to become proficient in reading. (fl-26 is majority-hispanic.) he also repeatedly cited<u+2014>in english and spanish<u+2014>provisions he wrote in <u+201c>better way<u+201d> about juvenile criminal-justice reform. on tuesday mr. ryan visited will hurd, another freshman, in texas<u+2019> 23rd district, which reaches from san antonio to el paso and includes 800 miles of mexican border. on friday he toured green bay with mike gallagher, a smart and impressive marine vet who is running to replace retiring republican rep. reid ribble in wisconsin<u+2019>s 8th district. these are the swing districts that make a house majority<u+2014>usually suburban, decided each election by a couple of percentage points, with voters who tend to be moderate, middle-class, younger than average and college-educated. these districts also tend to produce congress<u+2019>s most creative and productive politicians. think of mike coffman, from the denver suburbs, or barbara comstock of virginia<u+2019>s washington exurbs, bob dold of northern chicagoland, or utah<u+2019>s mia love, the first black republican woman sent to congress. they show what the gop, despite the trump interregnum, could be<u+2014>optimistic, forward-looking, inclusive. mr. ryan says the <u+201c>better way<u+201d> was designed to be <u+201c>majoritarian, an agenda that can win in the suburbs of miami and denver and midland, texas. something that can succeed and capture the hearts and minds of discerning voters in red, purple and blue areas, so that we can win a national election, win the electoral college, keep congress, put it into law. that is the only way in my opinion under this constitutional republic you can save this country.<u+201d> this conviction helps explain mr. ryan<u+2019>s ambiguity about mr. trump, who is already constructing a stabbed-in-the-back narrative that blames the speaker for his likely loss. mr. ryan believes the government and economic status quo isn<u+2019>t merely inherited from the past but borrowed from the future, which american leaders have an obligation to change. <u+201c>we have a window, no one knows how long it is, but it<u+2019>s not long, to fix this trajectory that we<u+2019>re on, on our own terms as a country,<u+201d> he explains, adding that <u+201c>we<u+2019>re in a vicious cycle: bad economy, bad debt, bad foreign policy, bad politics, so people feel much more insecure, economically and from a security standpoint. <u+201c>it doesn<u+2019>t take much in my opinion, but for some big things to happen, a handful of big reforms, and we can turn ourselves into a virtuous cycle. america can regenerate very quickly,<u+201d> he continues. <u+201c>do i wish we were having a debate about these ideas right now instead of the latest twitter storm or wikileaks or, you know, personality contest?<u+201d> mr. ryan says. <u+201c>yeah, of course i do. but it is what it is.<u+201d> even amid mr. trump<u+2019>s intrusions, mr. ryan says that <u+201c>our nominee is fine with this agenda. he doesn<u+2019>t run on the agenda. he doesn<u+2019>t talk about it. but we know we don<u+2019>t have a problem or an obstacle with our nominee with this agenda. would it have been ideal<u+2014><u+201d> was that because the <u+201c>better way<u+201d> skips trade and immigration? <u+201c>well, that was something that was divisive in our own party,<u+201d> mr. ryan replies. <u+201c>we need to run on an agenda that unifies us as republicans and as conservatives, and what are the big issues that must be tackled? the economy, growth, poverty, debt, deficits, self-government, the constitution, national security<u+2014>that<u+2019>s pretty big right there.<u+201d> the other political problem for mr. ryan is that maybe a third of gop house districts are pro-trump, a third anti-trump and a third somewhere in between. he has been in a vise since mr. trump won the nomination. if the nominee keeps sinking, he could take down the house and senate majorities in the undertow. democrats are up a couple points in the so-called generic ballot, where pollsters ask voters which party they prefer to control congress. but over the fall the republican image has improved slightly even as mr. trump<u+2019>s has plummeted. mrs. clinton isn<u+2019>t popular either, and the democratic advantage hasn<u+2019>t reached (not yet at least) the double-digits that precede a wave election. this week democrats launched a huge battleground advertising blitz hoping to tie vulnerable republicans to mr. trump<u+2019>s medicine ball. the polls generally show that voters decouple mr. trump from the republican party<u+2014>so far. this late message may not break through because until now democrats have depicted mr. trump as far worse than a normal republican, and the competitive house media markets are expensive. good examples are new hampshire<u+2019>s 1st district, which covers manchester and the seacoast region north of boston, or minnesota<u+2019>s 2nd district, the suburbs west of the twin cities. mr. ryan has raised nearly $50 million for gop candidates. one less noticed edge is that individual republicans are in sync politically with their districts. democrats didn<u+2019>t follow the rahm emanuel strategy of 2006, when they recruited top-tier centrists to build a majority. most of them got wiped out in 2010 with a 63-seat loss, and this year<u+2019>s slate is more in keeping with the leftward march of president obama<u+2019>s progressive party. mr. curbelo<u+2019>s opponent, former congressman joe garcia, refers to the gop as <u+201c>the taliban.<u+201d> surveys suggest that most americans can<u+2019>t wait for the election to be over. but this anticipation discounts the potential for u.s. politics to get worse, not better. mr. ryan tried to work out a corporate-tax-reform-for-infrastructure trade with sen. chuck schumer, which he says failed because the democratic party is now <u+201c>run by bernie sanders and elizabeth warren. this is not a party run by alice rivlin and erskine bowles. there aren<u+2019>t 1990s democrats in this party anymore.<u+201d> he isn<u+2019>t optimistic about an emergence of a pragmatic hillary that some like to imagine. meanwhile, the gop stations of the cross will probably continue. mr. ryan<u+2019>s critics, on the left and right, often attribute the trump phenomenon to the speaker<u+2019>s agenda and priorities and their supposed lack of popular appeal: voters aren<u+2019>t thrilled by tax reform and won<u+2019>t attend a rally about every student succeeding. republicans need to <u+201c>offer<u+201d> more, this critique goes, whether that implies benefits like child subsidies or trump-style populism. there is some evidence in support: the presidential candidates who ran in explicit opposition to the republican party<u+2014>mr. trump and ted cruz <u+2014>captured 44.9% and 25.1% of the gop primary vote, respectively. <u+201c>the critics basically say to be populist and give vague platitudes. what does that achieve? we need to be smart in how we talk about our ideas, but if we believe in what we believe in we should be clear and honest,<u+201d> mr. ryan responds. <u+201c>if you think you know the right way to fix a problem, then go identify that solution and go talk about it and campaign on it. do i believe everybody is going to read every little detail of this<u+201d><u+2014>removing another copy of the <u+201c>better way<u+201d> from his coat pocket<u+2014><u+201c>or do i believe that people are going to be focused on the micro-policy or principles of this? <u+201c>no. but what matters is they know we actually have a solution, what that solution looks like, so that we can earn the right to put that solution in place. to me it<u+2019>s all about winning the moral authority to put it in place after the election,<u+201d> mr. ryan continues. <u+201c>to me, critics who say it<u+2019>s too dense, or it<u+2019>s not populist enough, are missing the point.<u+201d> meanwhile, if congress<u+2019>s carlos curbelos and mia loves get washed out but the gop retains the house, the lower chamber could become even more of a horror show, as a smaller majority would intensify the gop<u+2019>s factional politics. <u+201c>we need to have a healthy majority and a strong majority. if we have a razor-thin majority then every vote can be problematic. every vote on everything can be difficult,<u+201d> mr. ryan says. a larger majority, he adds, can <u+201c>dictate terms,<u+201d> whoever ends up in the white house. so does the 2012 vice presidential nominee think that year or 2016 was worse? he pauses a few beats. <u+201c>i don<u+2019>t know the answer to that yet,<u+201d> mr. ryan says. depends on the outcome? <u+201c>yeah. depends. look, i don<u+2019>t mind taking hits at all. it doesn<u+2019>t bother me, i<u+2019>m so used to that. i just want to make sure that we win. so whatever it takes to save our majority, that<u+2019>s my primary responsibility. so if we win and we can put these reforms in place, then it<u+2019>s all worth it. if we lose again, like we did in 2012, i just so deeply worry about where this country is going.<u+201d> mr. rago is a member of the journal<u+2019>s editorial board.
inside paul ryan<u+2019>s congress rescue mission - wsj
joseph rago