In Arizona, Kari Lake Makes Waves

“I don’t need a pollster or a consultant from D.C. or another big city to come into Arizona and tell me what Arizona is about,” she told Politico. Ms. Lake campaigns on instincts and personal energy, never shirks a question or a debate, and gathers attention, as Axios reported, by “dressing down reporters and eviscerating the mainstream media.” GOP candidates across the country have much to learn from her mettle and her sense of citizens’ outrage. While cable shows obsess about her MAGA allies or Trump connections, she rises above it by railing against what’s happening in Arizona and the nation: food prices lighting up supermarket cash registers like Vegas slot machines, a porous border flooded with migrants, urban centers overrun with the homeless, deteriorating standards in schools, rampant lawlessness.

What makes Ms. Lake’s message different is its simplicity and fearlessness. It’s unapologetic and sincere, not clothed in code words. Republican communication in recent years has been mired in meaningless language. Democrats have routinely won the political war of words. They never describe Republicans as “conservatives,” only as “extremists,” “right-wingers,” or “ultra-MAGA.” Because the root of the word “conservative” is positive, Democrats would never use it to describe an opponent.

On the right, however, Republicans have allowed the looniest Democrats to get away with calling themselves “progressives.” The root of that word is also positive.

Bernie Sanders

is an avowed socialist and

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

an unabashed radical. To call them “progressive” is a perversion of political rhetoric.

Moreover, I repeatedly hear GOP candidates on the stump hammer away at their opponents for being “woke.” How many Americans know or care what that word means? Is being woke better than being asleep? “Woke” is a plastic, sterile word, good for use on cable talk shows. It allows

Bill Maher

to complain about the hosts of “Morning Joe” but has no bearing on the struggle for political power.

Ms. Lake’s popularity is booming because she has left behind the conventions of the past and called out her opponents for what they are. Maybe it was inadvertent, but she has adopted

Ronald Reagan’s

1976 call for a Republican Party “raising a banner of bold colors, no pale pastels” and “standing for certain values which will not be impaired.”

For Republican candidates now in tight races, your opponents aren’t “progressives” caught up in “woke” agendas. They are power-seeking lovers of big government tied to the extremist views of

Joe Biden,

who has wrought inflation and economic chaos, adopted a divisive, leftist agenda, and given us a laughingstock vice president who believes the border is secure. No Republican candidate should allow an opponent to remain silent about the rot that eats at America’s great cities with crippling price increases, crime, lagging schools, deadly drug use, homelessness, and an invasion of illegal migrants.

Kari Lake has adopted a simple and successful strategy: Be genuine, focus on real issues, and show some spunk. That’s a recipe for Republican triumph.

Mr. Khachigian was chief speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan and chief campaign strategist for California Gov.