Posted on 05/31/2010 4:42:14 PM PDT by moneyrunner
There’s an interesting essay by J. Robert Smith in Pajamas Media on what Republicans can learn from General Giap, the man who led the North Vietnamese to victory against both the French and Americans.
The advice caused me to think how Republican challengers can beat Democrat incumbents this November.
Assume that the Democrat incumbents are not particularly bad, not tainted by scandal, even Blue Dogs. How can they be beaten? We have an example right here in Virginia Beach: Glenn Nye. Nye is a Blue Dog who voted against ObamaCare and Cap and Trade. Outraged Democrats have written letters to the editor (and had them printed) denouncing Nye for being a traitor. His other votes are found here. That makes him a moderate as far as Democrats go. He beat a Republican incumbent, Thelma Drake in the last election.
Here’s what caught my eye:
Beyond the communist claptrap, Giap recognized that the Vietnamese who sided with the communists weren’t fighting for a workers’ paradise and international brotherhood. Pro-communist Vietnamese — peasants who did the bulk of the fighting and dying — did so to achieve national independence. Vietnam had a long history of invasion and occupation. Most Hanoi-supporting Vietnamese had a simple but powerful motivation: freedom from foreign domination. Voters, like fighters, need to be for something or someone. Though successful challenges are mostly about making elections referendums on incumbents, voters still need reasons to be for challengers. Giving voters compelling reasons to cast ballots for challengers is an important part of the mix.
(Excerpt) Read more at moneyrunner.blogspot.com ...
Kill your opponents before they kill you.
I saw a good program about Dien Bien Phu a few years back. I doubt any soldiers have ever fought better than those French did.
The real lesson is that if you outnumber your opponent by 100 to 1 and still have trouble beating them, you will be praised to high heaven if you are a Commie. He also treated the few French troops who survived, really brutally.
I don’t think he beat the Americans in a single battle.
We beat ourselves. If the damned politicians would have let us fight to win that war would have been over a lot quicker.
Immaterial
He figured out that he could beat American Liberals while losing every battle.
I wish conservative would learn the same lesson.
Are you on board?
Do you remember the battles for New York (American media) and Washington (Congress of the United States, 1974)? The Communists prevailed there, and those crucial victories undid everything that the American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines accomplished on the battlefield. And with that victory of the forces of evil over imperfection in Washington, the forces of evil triumphed over the forces of freedom in Democratic Kampuchea, Socialist Vietnam, and Laos. And still they marched onward to Benin, Burma, Cape Verde, Madagascar, Angola, Seychelles, Ethiopia, Grenada, Afghanistan, and Nicaragua before Reagan dared to confront them.
Although defeated once in its historic heartland of Russia, the communist menace continues to march onward, enveloping Venezuela and Peru and building again in Russia. Nicaragua suffers, Honduras narrowly repels the menace, insurgents control large portions of Mexico, Brazil flirts dangerously with the enemy, Kyrgyzstan falls, Lebanon dims its hopes at civilization, and Ukraine totters while South Korea faces mortal danger from starving nuclear communist North Korea. Islamofascists increasingly control Afghanistan, muscle their way through the cities of Pakistan, infiltrate Mexico, control Syria, enslave Sudan, worship in Saudi Arabia, train in Yemen, dominate Iran, celebrate their victories in Somalia, and kill on the streets of Iraq. It’s a dangerous world out there. Where are our politicians and our media now? If anything, our media are better now with the talent that Rush Limbaugh takes on loan from God. But our Congress is all the more intent on the surrender of the homeland.
If only the politicians had one-hundredth of the appreciation for America that the dead heroes that we honor today did. Without the sacrifice of our men (and women) under arms and those who supplied and ministered to them, our politicians would not have the freedom to disdain their honor so.
That's not easy to do since every single Democrat incumbent Senator and Representative are guilty of voting FOR Harry Reed or Nancy Pelosi to be Senate Majority Leader and Speaker of the House. This was straight up down vote with nothing else attached to it like any of the bills they vote on. This needs to be hung around each one of their necks at every town hall meeting and during every debate with their opponents.
100-1?
Didn’t have as much to do with it as the artillery hidden in the hills as well as the AA.
If I were the Republican candidate the November, I would tell the voters that Glenn Nye is probably a nice man. He’s probably an honorable man. But he’s Nancy Pelosi’s man. And if he goes back to Washington, he’ll vote for Pelosi for Speaker. And when critical votes are needed to pass bills that Obama, Pelosi and Reed want passed, Glenn Nye will vote the way they tell him – because he’s a Democrat. Glenn Nye will appear in my ad campaign, if he appears at all, embraced by Nancy Pelosi, voting for Nancy Pelosi, supporting Nancy Pelosi. In Virginia Beach, if the Republicans are wise, the vote will not be about Glenn Nye, it will be a vote against Obama, Pelosi and Reed.
This should be the Republican strategy everywhere, using Alinsky's tactics against them: make the election a referendum on Pelosi and Obama, personify them as the true face of the Dem party.
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