What General Giap Can Teach Republicans About Winning in November

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.

Nye is no wild eyed Liberal. He understands that he represents the military, the largest employer – the biggest business – in his distinct. What is the simplest and most powerful motivation that most American have? If the Vietnamese wanted freedom from foreign domination, most Americans want freedom from Liberal domination. They want to throw off the shackles that Obama, Pelosi, and Reed want to fasten to us. They are fearful of the crushing debt that Washington is loading on them and their children in perpetuity. They are fearful of the destruction of private enterprise as government takes over more of the economy. They are fearful that the freedom to be left alone, to live their lives as they wish, is being taken from them by ever more intrusive government command and control. They are fearful of power crazed Congressmen and women who pass two thousand page bills changing the very fabric of their personal lives without even once reading it. They see hollow men and women pretend to competence when it becomes ever more apparent that even basic understanding of facts is totally lacking.

They have thrown off the blinders that the media imposed and realize”HopeN’Change” is not a policy. That a President whose response to the biggest oil spill in American history is to point fingers and yell: “Plug the damn hole” then goes golfing followed by a vacation lacks not merely competence but any shred of empathy for the people of the country.

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.

And I would tie Glenn Nye to the Virginian Pilot.  There is little question that they will support him in the election, but that isn't the main point.  People hate the arrogance and condescension of the media as much as they hate the Liberals in Congress.  I would excerpt every laudatory comment the cretins at the Pilot ever made about Glenn Nye and tell the people that he's a creature of the media.

Newt Gingrich and the Republicans won Congress in 1994 by making the election a national referendum. They had to create a national platform, the “Contract with America” to accomplish this, over the ridicule and opposition of the MFM. The sins committed by the Democrats prior to 1994 (remember the House Post Office?) were minor compared to the naked aggression they have shown against Middle America since the last election. This time a groundswell already exists. The Tea Party movement is proof of that. The campaign has been created by events, not focus groups. All it takes is an understanding of what people want and what people fear and people like Glenn Nye will be swept from the board.

Political pundits who see 1994 as a tsunami are going to be shocked by 2010. It will be like the Exxon Valdez compared to the BP well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. And the Democrats will be unable to cap it.

America is not in decline, America’s biggest weakness is its political class, where the decline is indisputable . . . .