Ryan’s plan has attracted cautiously positive comments from liberals like my colleague Ryan Cooper and Ezra Klein. Even Jonathan Chait — who believes that all Republican policy proposals are self-soothing gestures by powerless intellectuals, or lying billboards mean to conceal the construction of Galt’s Gulch — could write this about it: “It is certainly true that Ryan’s new proposals represent an important step away from the political extreme he has occupied his entire career… His poverty proposal contains signs of serious engagement with, and even concern for, the problem of poverty.”

Ryan’s plan — along with Dave Camp’s tax plan and proposals by Sens. Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and Mike Lee on a range of issues — reveals that at least some in the GOP are moving beyond the party’s “You didn’t build that,” anti-47 percent posturing. These proposals constitute green shoots in what had been a policy-thinking desert for the Obama-era right. If I had my druthers, some enterprising senator would pick up a few of Jon Huntsman’s proposed financial reforms.

Democrats may accuse all these proposals of being a mere performance put on for the benefit of grandee policy commentators. But what exactly is the policy agenda Hillary Clinton wants to enact? So far, all we have are gloomy reports about her difficulty balancing how she talks about the go-go 1990s. The GOP has a long way to go, but the latest Ryan proposal is a sign that at least it’s moving.