NO MORE BOMBASTIC RHETORIC.

Fifty years ago, I successfully campaigned for student government using the post title as a slogan.  Yes, that was the university of Wisconsin, and yes, a constituent or two noted that the slogan was bombastic itself.

Those were interesting years for student government, which was in transition from being dominated by hardcore pro-Khmer Rouge types to the Pail and Shovel Party, whose platform was to convert the student government fees to pennies and scatter them for students to scoop up with beach toys.  They kinda-sorta-delivered on that promise, as well as another one to bring the Statue of Liberty to Madison.  There was a precursor slate calling itself the PIMP Party, for People Indignant about Most Parties Party and one or two of theirs were also in the student senate at the time.  Steve Brist and Gerry Kassalow and I moved on to other things.

That's a lot of recollection to get to a meditation by former attorney general Bob Barr, who might be reminding Donald Trump that the antics of reality TV or Pail and Shovel might not be what voters dealing with real stakes want.  He starts with a point that mirrors both what Pail and Shovel were calling attention to, and what I was running on.

Trump had accurately diagnosed, and given voice to, the deep frustration of many middle-class and working-class Americans who were fed up with the excesses of progressive Democrats; the shameless partisanship of the mainstream media; and the smug condescension of elites who had mismanaged the country, sold them out, and appeared content to preside over the decline of America.

There's nothing quite like people who are stupid about being smart, is there?

There are two pillars in the Rush Limbaugh message. One is that so-called progressive policies have failed. The other is that advocates of those policies are frequently arrogant and condescending. Put another way, they're stupid about being smart. And that stupidity was on display for fourteen million viewers Wednesday night.

The palace guard media couldn't drag Hillary's pantsuited cankles into office then.

Turning back to Mr Barr's argument, note that Salena Zito is thinking along similar lines.

What made Trump inspire voters in places like central Appalachia is that he recognized their strengths, which had been long ignored and often ridiculed by the cultural elite. The media, the political parties, the corporations, Hollywood and academia looked down their noses at ordinary people who live here and basically anywhere more than 20 minutes outside of major metropolitan areas. These people, however, have their pride. They still hold dear the resourcefulness their parents and grandparents taught them to survive when economic lows creep into their hometowns. They know how to hunt for their meat and smoke it, raise chickens, keep a family budget and work all day with their hands. They rarely expected a handout, let alone believed they were entitled to one or entitled to anything at all.

Oh, you might get an argument about "handouts" what with farm subsidies and military posts and the Interstate Highways, but we're all in agreement about the condescension.  The Trump formula was more Pail and Shovel than Come let us reason together, Mr Barr notes.

For many, supporting Trump was an act of defiance — a protest. The more over the top he was, the more they savored the horrified reaction of the elites, especially the media. Arguments that Trump wasn’t presidential missed the point. Trump’s supporters wanted a disrupter. His voters felt that the left was taking a wrecking ball to the country, and they wanted to strike back with their own.

The Khmer Rouge faction of student government would have been happy to take a wrecking ball to the university and to the country, but in college, the easiest thing to do is leave student government to the careerists, pledge a fraternity, and if a Statue of Liberty head appears on the ice, skate out to it with your Instamatics and take pictures.  In real life, people have to be more serious.  Back to Mrs Zito.

In short, what Trump started to get wrong is what the media have always gotten wrong about these voters. They do not live by a credo filled with resentment and grievances. Their aspirations are about their communities, families and their future, and that is how they vote.

And back to Mr Barr.

I worried that no one could govern effectively in constant wrecking-ball mode. Still, I hoped that Trump would rise to the seriousness of the office and the moment. So once he became the GOP’s nominee, I supported him.

Unfortunately, after he was elected, Trump brought his wrecking-ball style to the task of governing the nation. He did not temper his disruptiveness and penchant for chaos. While his basic policy judgments were usually sound, his impulsiveness meant that things were almost always about to fly off the rails. When he became fixated on bad ideas or wanted to take things too far, it took his senior staff and cabinet secretaries an ungodly amount of maneuvering to keep him on track.

Long before he brought his grievance show to the Georgia elections, Donald Trump was his own worst enemy.  Mr Barr continues, "If Trump had run his re-election campaign on [deregulation, military strength, and toughness toward Red China] and dialed his churlishness back just a little, he would have won. But he lost because he insisted on running a base-only campaign."  That didn't work in 2020, it worked against the correlation of forces in 2022, and there is work to be done for 2024.

I believe the defining feature of our political landscape continues to be the sharp leftward lurch of the Democratic Party. That opens up a historic opportunity for the GOP — the opportunity to revive something like the old Reagan coalition: a combination of Republican-leaning, college-educated suburbanites; culturally conservative working-class voters; and even some classical liberals who are repulsed by the left’s authoritarianism.

Forging this coalition requires more than bombastic rhetoric. It requires a substantive, strategic, and disciplined president capable of executing a plan to achieve the durable reforms needed to set the country back on a sane course.

Mrs Zito suggests that the correlation of forces is favorable.

The good news for the conservative populist coalition is that it has not fallen apart; in truth, it has grown. It even attracted new Hispanic and black voters. The people the movement will likely peel off are the ones who were infrequent voters before Trump came along; they were the least ideological and more about Trump than the rest of the coalition. He didn't need to win for them; they just liked him because he was a unicorn in a business filled with suits.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties.  The persuadable voters are there to be persuaded, not scorned.  It's not bombastic to call attention to gasoline prices or unsafe streets.