At age 16, Lars Larson was spinning records and reading news, sports, and weather at the edge of a cow pasture in Tillamook, Oregon. Today he is a guest on the WSJ’s Kimberly Strasse show, All Things.

On the show, Kim and Lars tackle the big question: can Republicans energize their voters?

Before diving into the big question seemingly looming large for Republicans, Lars brings up the topic of impeachment. Is the nation looking forward to watching Democrats try to impeach Donald Trump for the next two years?

Lars has been on the radio a long time. Next year marks 52 years of Lars doing radio. Kim explains how she was familiar with Lars Larson at a young age. Kim’s has fond memories of Lars Larson and Kim’s dad, often saying, “Well, you know Lars said the other day…” 

Technically, Trump’s win was just a large plurality, but he beat the daylights out of the one-and-a-half-billion-dollar effort by Kamala Harris to be the Democrats’ president. “God help us if she’d been elected because things would be, you think they’re bad, you think you’re unhappy with $7 diesel and all that? They would be wiped out, and the Democrats would decide that our path to prosperity is going to be to simply tax everybody in America more as though that accomplishes anything. I think all of that is bad, and why would Americans vote for that?”

Drama All the Time

Kim reminds listeners that there is a long list of cabinet members and other members also to be impeached. Kim, from talking with a lot of people on the road, says that suddenly they awaken and say, Oh yes, what we really wanted was Kamala Harris-style governance. We’re all about democratic socialism now. And yes, we’re a little unhappy about $7 diesel.

Larson agrees with Kim, saying there is a lack of excitement. But he continues, if you didn’t appreciate the policies of Joe Biden and you anticipated the policies of Kamala Harris were going to be a lot worse, then I’ll vote for Donald Trump.

Most of what Trump promised has gone exactly where he promised it would go. Number one, secure the southern border. It’s better secured than it’s ever been in all of American history by the numbers.

#2: Bring inflation down. Well, I know you’d like to have erased the 40%  or 40% inflation that occurred during Biden. Trump didn’t promise that, but he did bring inflation back down to where we’re debating. Is 34% good enough? I don’t think even Trump thinks it’s good enough because two or a little over two is the target. But it’s certainly better than an average of 10% a year for four consecutive years, maintains Larson.

After coming back from a break, Kim asks Larson about the polls. Does he trust the polls? Are they getting things right?

After the polls were so wrong about Hillary Clinton, pollsters said they were ashamed of what they did, but Larson doesn’t think they were. Larson talks about a new poll he saw just this morning

Larson tells Kim, “34% of 18 to 30 years say they plan to vote. Now, we all know about the plans of millennials and younger people. So if you’re saying it’s dramatically bigger, they’d be right. If they pulled 34, that’s almost double what they usually do. But it also means two-thirds of that age group is not going to bother. They’re not even planning to vote.”

“Now the younger people could choose to go vote, and I don’t know why they’re lazy about it because that’s really what it comes down to is laziness saying, “Yeah, I know there’s an election. I know I could vote by mail. I could absentee vote. I could early vote. I’m just not going to even bother.” Well, if they’re telling you they care that little about it, then better they don’t take part.”

Kim asks, Are polls once again missing working-class voters, in particular white working-class voters?

Larson mentions other numbers that jumped out at him, Latino numbers, where they say Latino numbers are down. “Here’s the thing. I understand there’s a perception, I think mostly by white people, that they say, “Well, we can’t go after illegal aliens because Latinos won’t like it.” Actually, I’ve been invigorated by the fact that an awful lot of Latinos say, “You should come here legally like I did, as my mom and dad did.” And they don’t have much respect. And if you say, “Don’t you have respect for your fellow Latinos?

But you really think that Latino voters are so simplistic that they say, “Well, if you’re going to kick all the Latinos out, oh, and then by the way, that makes better job prospects and school prospects and housing prospects for my family and me.” You really think, asks Larson, that Latinos aren’t going to respond to that?”

This Is Reality

Kim next moves to the money issue: is the money disadvantage/advantage playing out here?

Larson answers: “You mean after USAID was done away with and all the other scams the Democrat Party were using and they used to be flush with cash and now they’re dead flat broke and the Republicans are flush with cash, but the Republicans, as far as near as I can tell, are not scamming it out of daycares at the Learing Center in Minnesota. Yeah.”

What about the guys who write the big checks? Kim wants to know what’s going on there. The big check writers remain “completely sore over the whole Kamala Harris campaign and the disastrous kind of cosmic mismanagement of their money in that 2024 cycle. Money is a proxy for speech.” Is this massive money advantage Republicans have really going to matter on the ground?

Larson thinks there’s more because Democrats have made a rallying cry of “we’re here to protect democracy.” Democrats engineered the nomination of Joe Biden and knocked his opponents out. “They had done somewhat the same thing to get Obama in and knock his opponents out.” And when Kamala Harris comes along, they said, “We don’t even have to bother with the people or voters or anything like that. We’re just going to choose, this is your candidate.”

Well, says Larson, when the Democratic Party, the defenders say, “We’re going to protect democracy by cutting the voters all the way out of all the important decisions,” who could respect that?

Larson then tells Kim,  “Come out here, Mr. President, give them the message. And yes, they’ll all get mad, and they’ll break things, and they’ll set things on fire. And Americans will get a great picture of what America’s going to look like if you let those knuckleheads take over.”

Kim, in Oregon, says voters are “demoralized. They want to be reminded, she says, that they’re actually like-minded folks, common sense, other voters, and that’s what you end up seeing in these rallies.”

Kim asks Larson, should Republicans be out there with a next two-year agenda?

Voters are not really happy about some of these temporary problems, cost of living things. And voters also, as you know, their sort of attitude is, “What are you doing for me next?”

Kim wonders why the GOP, why Trump, is just not out there with an agenda for the final two years. What are Larson’s thoughts on that? And if they were to do it, what should they be talking about?

Larson thinks affordability should lead the list. “Take your toughest critic and say they’re not really happy about some of these temporary problems, cost of living things. And voters also, their sort of attitude is, “What are you doing for me next?”

Lars Larson and Kim Strassel wonder why the GOP and Trump aren’t out there with an agenda for the final two years.