The future of Cantor's new proposals is unclear. | M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO Cantor aims to rebrand House GOP

House Republicans haven’t settled on an agenda yet, but Majority Leader Eric Cantor is ready to rebrand the party.

The Virginia Republican is a metaphor for a GOP conference that is trying to modernize on the fly after a disappointing 2012 election that saw President Barack Obama win a second term and Democrats gain seats in both chambers of Congress.


While national Republicans can wait years to figure out what they want to be, congressional Republicans have to reshape and reform while running the country.

( Also on POLITICO: Virginia embodies GOP's woes)

Cantor plans to introduce his vision of America in a Tuesday speech at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. It includes granting more visas for highly educated workers, eliminating medical-device taxes and simplifying tax filings. His aides concede that all he’s doing is “taking policies that have been on the shelf for a while, or back burner, and elevating them.” He’s not completely abandoning Republicans’ core focus on slashing spending, just pairing it with other more palatable talk.

Call this Cantor 4.0 — just the latest twist in the majority leader’s attempt to hit on a winning conservative agenda at a time when Republicans are trying to regain their footing in the midst of a political pummeling at the ballot box and fiscal fights that haven’t worked to their advantage.

( PHOTOS: 13 things more popular than Congress)

This isn’t Cantor’s first crack at repackaging Republicanism. Or second. Or third.

In 2009, it was the National Council for a New America — an effort filled with boldfaced GOP names to move beyond the toxicity of the George W. Bush years. That was quashed after pushback from the right and ethics concerns.

In 2010, it was the “Young Guns,” a book that was meant to highlight a new generation of conservative leadership.

When Republicans took the majority in 2011, Cantor branded the House GOP as the “cut-and-grow” majority to emphasize a laserlike focus on spending cuts. He launched a website called YouCut that allowed the public to vote on weekly bills to pare back the federal government. That effort has ended, as has the hunger for constant focus on budget austerity.

Cantor’s current message: Republicans should supplement their cut-and-burn zeal with legislation meant to better people’s lives. He will be flanked by regular-Joe Americans as he gives the speech — titled “Making Life Work.” Its purpose to prescribe policies rather than detail legislative process, something that people in Cantor’s orbit say that Republicans rely on too frequently — Speaker John Boehner’s speeches have touched on this theme.

Like other Republican leaders, Cantor is seeking to get past the brutal spending battles of 2011 and 2012 that bloodied the GOP image and resulted in their political battering last November. Republicans want to emphasize things that resonate better with the American public and play down those that have caused Republicans trouble on the campaign trail.

Much of what Cantor will say Tuesday is a rehash of what he’s advocated over the past few years. During a speaking tour of top universities in 2011, he touted school choice, work-schedule flexibility for mothers, the dimming prospects of this generation of Americans and how Republicans should appeal to inner-city families.

Excerpts released by his office Monday afternoon revealed no big news that will come from the speech. Cantor is set to say Republicans plan to “advance proposals aimed at producing results in areas like education, health care, innovation and job growth.”

There don’t appear to be any big prescriptions on tax policy, as Cantor is set to say that taxpayers “shouldn’t need a worksheet to know how many dependents you have.” Cantor’s speech also misstates the form employees fill out at a new job — it’s a W-4, not a W-2.

On immigration, Cantor is set to offer broad principles but steers clear of major policy pronouncements. Generally, he hasn’t taken a stand on Obama’s biggest legislative issues of the day, including immigration and gun control, echoing the House GOP leadership in general, which has preferred to let the Senate go first.

“While we are a nation that allows anyone to start anew, we are also a nation of laws, and that’s what makes tackling the issue of immigration reform so difficult,” Cantor will say, according to excerpts. “We must balance respect for the rule of law and respect for those waiting to enter this country legally, with care for people and families, most of whom just want to make a better life, and contribute to America.”

He is driving the point home in a round of media interviews, including a Sunday appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The future of Cantor’s proposals are unclear.

Some on Cantor’s staff said legislation will not be introduced after the speech, others say to expect a push on the House floor, which Cantor controls. Don’t mistake this for a leadership-wide effort: The speech was crafted inside Cantor’s office, with little input from Boehner’s and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy’s offices. It was unveiled at a meeting of top GOP leaders in the past few weeks, several sources said.

The audience that might need to be sold most on the new way of doing business is the conservative base, a dynamic underscored by a meeting Monday of five of Cantor’s top aides and a small set of conservative journalists in the majority leader’s third-floor Capitol office.

Over lunch from the boutique Capitol Hill pizza shop “We the Pizza,” Cantor chief of staff Steve Stombres, policy director Neil Bradley, and press aides Doug Heye, Megan Whittemore and Rory Cooper gave an off-the-record sneak preview of the AEI speech as the reporters and aides munched on slices of BBQ chicken, sausage and pepperoni pizza.

Some conservatives feel completely comfortable with the rebranding.

“When a message doesn’t resonate, there are two things you need to do: evaluate the message and evaluate the policy,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who works closely with Cantor as a committee chairman. “And I think the party, rightfully so, is looking at both and I think in many cases the message of prosperity — of trying to bring to all Americans — got lost in the last election. And I think Leader Cantor, rightfully so, wants to make sure that people truly understand it.”

But others aren’t so sure.

“That’s how you grow the economy,” Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) said. “When you say spending cuts, I call it fiscal responsibility and I call it reduction of borrowing. There are a lot of ways you can phrase it where it can come across and should be positive.”