By Peggy Noonan
Texas Insider Report: WASHINGTON D.C. Democrats are down & sniping at each other. Thats the way it goes when parties lose. Whats interesting is the mood this week among Republicans on the ground. Its not triumphal. They all seem to have in the back of their minds a question: Is this election the beginning of the big turnaround?
Is this when the GOP comes to the fore as its best self and soberly shrewdly pursues policies that will help dig our country out of the mess? Or will the great sweep of 2010 come to be seen in retrospect as just another lurch and shift in a nation whose political tectonic plates have been unstable since 2006?
Theyre not sure but theres a high degree of hope for the former. And thats news because Republicans havent been hopeful in a long time.
They continue to be blessed by luck. Whatever word means the opposite of snakebit that is what the Republican party is right now. One reason they are feeling hope is that they have received two big and unexpected gifts from President Obama.
The first of course was his political implosionhis quick descent and speedy fall into unpopularity which shaped the outcome of the 2010 elections.
At the heart of that descent was the presidents inability to understand how the majority of Americans were thinking. From the day he was sworn in he seemed to have had no practical or intuitive sense of what was on the 
American mind. By early 2009 they had one deep and central worry the economy.
But his central preoccupation was reforming health care. He devoted his first 18 months to it and got what he wanted but at the price of seeming wholly out of touch with the thoughts and concerns of the American people.
This week the president gave Republicans a second unexpected gift. He reacted to the elections outcome in a way that suggested hes still in his own world still seeing a reality no one else is seeing. The problem wasnt his policies but that he didnt explain them well. It wasnt health-care reform it was his failed attempt to popularize it.
His problem was that he was not political enough. He was too substantive too serious. Americans have been under stress and people under stress dont think clearly and so they couldnt see the size of his achievements.
He sounded like a man who couldnt see what was obvious to everyone else and once again made his political adversaries seem in comparison more realistic more clear-sighted and responsive to public opinion. And he did this while everyone was watching. Again what a gift.
Two areas seem to me key for Republican leaders in Washington. One is a long-term concern the other an immediate one.
The first has to do with the art of political persuasion. A month ago in conversation with a veteran Democrat I mentioned that the old clich is now truer than ever that everything happens in the center. The path to 
victory is through the center thats where things are won. The Democrat nodded vigorously. Compromise" she said its so important."
But compromise was not my point. Persuasion was my point.
Compromise is a tool you use to get the best legislation possible but you have to persuade the big center that your way is the better way. Were in an age where politicians assert insist and leave. Its all quick blunt and dumb.
But to win and hold the center you have to make your case you have to show youre philosophically serious you have to show your logic and connect it to a philosophy. You dont sit around saying
I like centrists so I compromise" you say Heres what we believe heres how we think and why."
The establishment of the GOP hasnt been good at this. Some of them arent philosophically serious. Some dont know that persuasion is at the heart of things. Some know but arent good at it. Some think theyre never given quite the right venue to expand on their views or questioned in the right way. They should create venues. A lot of this will fall to the newly elected congressmen and senators and the philosophically inclined incumbents whove been quiet and let the leadership dominate the stage the past few years. Right now the center is with the Republicans. They voted like Democrats in 2008 and like Republicans in 2010. But theres going to be lots of drama in Washington the next few months and things could turn on a dime. To hold the center you have to respect your own case enough to argue for it and respect the people enough to explain it. The second area has to do with the media environment that will exist in January when the new Congress is sworn in. The mainstream media already has a story line in its head and it is that a lot of these new Congress critters are a little radical a little nutty. Media bias is what we all know it is largely political but also having to do with the needs of editors and producers. The media is looking for drama. They are looking for a colorful story. They want to do reporting that isnt bland that has a certain edge. We saw this throughout the past year as they covered big tea party rallies. A reporter would be walking along with a cameraman. At one picnic blanket she sees a sober fellow and his handsome family. He looks like an orthodontist or a midlevel manager. His family looks happy normal pleasant. Right next to them on a foldout lawn chair is a scowling woman in a big straw bonnet with a dozen tea bags hanging from the brim. Shes holding a sign a picture of Obama in a Hitler mustache. Who does the reporter choose to interview? I think we know. A better question might be who would you pick if you were that reporter and had a producer back in the newsroom who wanted interesting copy colorful characters and vivid pictures. The mainstream media this January will be looking for the nuts. I saw this in 1994 when the new Republican Congress came in. The media had a storyline in their head then too: These wild and crazy righties who just got elected are ... wild and crazy. They focused their cameras on people who could be portrayed as nutty and found them. The spirited Helen Chenoweth freshman from Idaho talked a little too much about black helicopters." She was portrayed as paranoid
and eccentric. Bob Livingston from New Orleans went to his first meeting of the Appropriations Committee wielding a machete. The new speaker Newt Gingrich was full of pronouncements and provocations; he was a one-man drama machine.
It was a high spirited group and one operating without a conservative media infrastructure to defend them. They and others were caught and tagged like big wild birds then released into the air damaged.
The point is when they want to paint you as nuts and yahoos dont help them paint you as nuts and yahoos.
Its good to keep in mind the advice of the 19th century actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell who once said speaking in a different context that she didnt really care what people did as long as they didnt do it in the street and frighten the horses.
That would be the advice for incoming Republicans: Stand tall speak clear and dont frighten the horses.
Peggy Noonan is a columnist whose work appears weekly in the The Wall Street Journals Weekend Edition & on OpinionJournal.com. Her first book the bestseller What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era" was published in 1990.
