2016 GOP candidates pitch poverty solutions in SC

In a race spearheaded by national security and questions about the need to broaden the GOP’s appeal, a half-dozen 2016 Republican presidential candidates came to Columbia, S.C., on Saturday to offer their solutions to aid the poor.

The forum drew the GOP field’s main four establishment candidates — Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey and John Kasich of Ohio, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. They are seeking ways to topple more unconventional national front-runners, New York billionaire Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

Trump, who has become popular with sweeping promises to fix the nation’s problems using his business experience, has attracted big crowds, including 6,000 people at a rally in Rock Hill, S.C., on Friday. The poverty forum sponsored by the Jack Kemp Foundation drew about 1,000 people to the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center.

Candidates at the event moderated by House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who was the party’s 2012 vice presidential nominee, and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott spoke about how the party needs to show more compassion for the poor to win over skeptical voters.

"We need to campaign in places where we're uncomfortable,” Christie said.

Improving education and prison sentencing reforms were among the talking points. Christie discussed how he thought unions hurt education by keeping ineffective teachers in schools. Kasich mentioned giving criminals coming out of prison better chances at success when re-entering the community.

The issue of income inequality, a significant Democratic campaign, was dismissed. Rubio said raising the minimum wage could make workers more expensive than machines.

The best solutions can come from outside Washington, candidates said. Bush discussed his new plan to hand over federal food stamp and housing-assistance programs to the states, which could establish their own goals for success.

“People are stuck in poverty, and the notion of some that they want to stay there is just totally ridiculous,” Bush said. “We’ll never win elections if we send any kind of message like that. We’ll become the minority party if we do that.”

The forum also allowed two candidates who are trying to woo social conservative voters in South Carolina, retired Maryland neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Arkansas Gov. Huckabee, to tout their faith and family-based solutions to a more ideological diverse audience.

Carson compared his flat tax plan with tithing in that parishioners pay the same portion of their earnings to the church no matter how well they perform financially during the year.

Huckabee suggested making getting a divorce tougher than getting out of a contract to buy a car. This would lead to more personal accountability.

"The best way to have smaller government is having bigger-hearted people who govern themselves," he said.

How the pitch to solve poverty would sway S.C. voters remains unclear, especially since the current leaders in the state’s Feb. 20 GOP presidential primary spent Saturday in Iowa.

Bill Robinson, a Department of Defense retiree who came to the forum from Summerville, S.C., has not picked a favorite candidate, though he wished Bush would be more dynamic to win over more voters.

"I’m still felling around looking for someone who can beat the Democrats," he said. "Because these guys are right, I think there’s a lot of failed policies, and I think there is a poverty-educational complex that sort of owns the Democrats."

This story was originally published January 9, 2016 at 3:50 PM with the headline "2016 GOP candidates pitch poverty solutions in SC."