Which Marco Rubio — the modernizer, or the new face for old policies?

Marco Rubio spoke to voters at a campaign rally in South Carolina on Sunday. Alex Wong/Getty Images

Since Reagan’s day, tax cuts have been the cornerstone of Republican economic policy, and at times appear to be the entirety of it. Yet there’s a group of younger, reform-oriented conservatives — the so-called “reformicons” — who see that much has changed since 1980 and are pushing the GOP to address the concerns of working families more directly.

Rubio entered the race as a darling of that movement, and his campaign website and policy statements abound with wonky, reformicon-style ideas: a higher-ed accreditation system that would allow low-cost competitors to pricey colleges; student loan payments that are proportional to recent graduates’ earnings; an expansion of the child tax credit.

At a town hall event that I attended in Bedford, N.H., earlier this month, Rubio at least alluded to some of those policies. “We’re going to take our message to the millions of Americans who are struggling, living paycheck to paycheck,” he said, “Because, for a long time, the left has been telling them, ‘Conservatives don’t care about people like you.’ ” He went on to bemoan the student debt that burdens younger Americans. “You know why I’m so passionate about it and why [Democrats] can’t lecture me? Because I had a student loan,” he said.

Yet he didn’t go into details about what he’d do to address the problem. The Bedford event took place at a suburban school jam-packed with parents — presumably a receptive audience for new ideas about higher ed. But the reformicon part of his pitch took up less than two minutes of a 38-minute talk.

In contrast, most of the positions Rubio has emphasized in debates sound familiar from past GOP presidential campaigns. He echoes George W. Bush in his support for regime change and greater defense spending. On taxes, Rubio’s plan would reduce revenues by $6.8 trillion over 10 years, concludes a new study by the Tax Policy Center, and the proceeds would flow disproportionately to the wealthy. The top 0.1 percent of households currently pay about 13.5 percent of taxes, according to The Wall Street Journal. But they’d get nearly 20 percent of Rubio’s tax cuts in 2017 — an average tax cut of $932,841 each.

This stance helps explain his appeal to the party establishment; well-heeled GOP donors want what they want.

Moreover, even modest departures from their priorities can create friction for a candidate. During Saturday’s debate in South Carolina, one of the moderators, conservative columnist Kimberley Strassel, grilled Rubio on his child tax credit; the money he’d devote to that initiative, she insinuated, could instead be used to cut the top income tax rate.

After repeating the same rehearsed line over and over in the New Hampshire debate, Rubio was lampooned as an empty “Marcobot” — an ironic criticism, given his earnest efforts to position himself as an “ideas” candidate. But the Florida senator set himself up for that treatment by pushing his most distinctive ideas into the background of his presidential campaign.

Jaden Walls, 8, of Manchester, N.H., held a sign in support of Rubio during his primary night rally in Manchester.Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press