The GOP is becoming the party of ideas again. Will the 2016 candidates notice?

The most underappreciated story in U.S. politics is that the Republican Party is becoming the party of ideas again.

Political evolutions usually happen in cycles. When one party is dominant, it grows overconfident and lazy; when it loses an election or two, it realizes the need for fresh thinking and embraces it, thereby priming the pump for its next round of dominance.

In the 1970s, the post-war consensus around big government started to break down over inflation, mass unemployment, the explosion of welfare rolls, and punishing tax rates. Think tanks like the Heritage Foundation made the GOP the party of new policy proposals, such as the supply-side tax cuts that ended up changing the country. After the Democrats were handed multiple defeats in the 1980s, groups like the Democratic Leadership Council came along with a more centrist approach that was amenable to free trade, welfare reform, and other policies that had a big impact in the 1990s.

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And in between the "dominant and lazy" phase and the "eager, smart" phase, there is usually a period in which the party runs around like a headless chicken. As the party loses congressional seats and governorships, moderates are winnowed out, leaving behind the radicals who believe the only reason they lost was because they didn't try the old, discredited ideas hard enough.

That pretty much describes the Republican Party between 2006 and 2012. But the GOP is increasingly showing signs that it has emerged from the political wilderness.

Right now, the Democratic Party is selling pretty much the same ideas it was selling in the 1960s. Higher minimum wage! More environmental regulation! Higher taxes on the rich! More entitlements! It likes to tell itself that America's changing demographics are setting the stage for a more ambitious agenda. But it's really the same story all over again — the party is becoming overconfident and is about due for a rude awakening.

Meanwhile, a conservative intellectual movement has realized that while conservative principles are timeless, the policies used to enact those principles need to change with changing circumstances. These people are sometimes called "reform conservatives," or "reformocons" for short.

In the 1980s, the main issues were inflation, crime, punishing middle-class tax rates, and ponderous welfare rolls. Today these aren't the problems that really concern middle-class Americans, mostly because conservatives solved those problems. Now, the problems are stagnating wages, unstable family lives, byzantine health care bureaucracies, and crushingly mediocre schools.

So, the reformocons say, let's draw from the same principles that animated one of America's most successful anti-poverty programs, the Reagan-enacted Earned Income Tax Credit, and expand it and turn it into a wage subsidy system. Let's provide middle-class tax relief through an expanded child tax credit to help make it easier to raise a family, which is the most essential part of the American Dream. Let's realize that health care reform needs to expand coverage, but give consumers more choice instead of the restrictions that ObamaCare doles out.

This week, the Conservative Reform Network, a Washington, D.C.-based group that represents the best in reformocon thinking, unveiled ideas like these and more that really represent a fresh and innovative take on conservatism.

But there's a disconnect between the policy side and the political side. The main Republican presidential contenders are still shaping their agendas. While Tea Party stars and prominent candidates like Marco Rubio have embraced these ideas, most Republicans haven't yet.

These candidates need to realize that the GOP lost in 2012 not just because of a bad candidate. In fact, Mitt Romney ran ahead of the generic Republican in many states, including swing states. The GOP is losing because too many middle-class Americans believe that the GOP doesn't have their interests at heart. What interests them most is simply not what the GOP is offering, and as long as this continues they will not vote Republican.

There are conservative ways to answer those concerns. But voters aren't dumb. The way to do this is not just through a better marketing campaign — it is through actual policy.

That's what conservative heroes like Reagan and Newt Gingrich understood. Let's hope the 2016 candidates do so as well.