Peggy Noonan seems to be losing her edge. Her column this week, about how Republicans still need to show that they understand the message of the Tea Party movement, is obvious and behind the curve. Worse, it's the sort of thing she's probably hearing from friends like Chris Matthews. She's a good speech writer, but she doesn't have Ronald Reagan to provide the message she puts into words anymore, and without that, she doesn't seem to have anything to inspire her rhetoric.

Of course, the Republicans aren't making any good news to accompany the successes of the Tea Party movement, so what else is there to say about them? We're watching a vacuum of leadership. People are fed up with Hope and Change, that doesn't deliver, but nobody out there seems to have new ideas that the media recognizes. Of course, conservatives/libertarians are still the ones with ideas that work, but they're not really new ones, and what's new about that? Nothing to send a thrill up Chris Matthews' leg.

The think that Reagan had was the ability to highlight the greatness of America's basic principles, liberty, free enterprise, property rights, self-government and the ability of free people to create a better life. "Progressives," true to the irony with which they name all their efforts, only know how to complain about what we haven't achieved, but have only vague or dishonest proposals for improving things. Hence, their promises fail or only make things worse.

What we need, along with more inspiring leaders, is a more realistic electorate. When politicians start promising hope, change, a new deal, or anything new, for that matter, our eyes should roll. I might like Ron Paul, if he weren't arguing for foreign policy based on George Washington's farewell address. The world is too unstable for us to act like we still have to play below the radar of Britain and France, or Russia, China and Persia, for that matter.