COLUMBIA, S.C. — Republican presidential candidates on Saturday turned their attention away from border walls and terrorist threats and birth certificates, if only for a day, to focus on a topic that is dear to the hearts of some leading conservative thinkers but has remained far from the center of the GOP race: poverty in America.

It created a spectacle that seemed far removed from the tumult of the campaign at large: A low-octane discussion of conservative policy that was short on candidate sniping and red-meat applause lines and long on mentions of block grants, school vouchers and the Earned Income Tax Credit.

That was the intent of the event’s sponsors, the Jack Kemp Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, and its leading moderator, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who has promised to use his office to make the 2016 election into a battle of ideas rather than personalities. The Kemp Forum on Expanding Opportunity, as the event was billed, was focused on issues near to Ryan’s wonky heart and that of his mentor, the late Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.).

Read the article “Paul Ryan Leads GOP Candidates in Summit to Discuss Poverty Solutions” on washingtonpost.com.