GOP pulling out old ‘betrayal’ strategy for 2006

Tuesday, July 11, 2006 | 7:28 a.m.

The image of the Vietnam veteran spit on at the airport by a long-haired anti-war activist is now legendary, as much a part of perceptions of that war as napalm hitting the jungle or a burning draft card.

Even now, politicians such as Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, who is running in Nevada's 2nd Congressional District primary, use the story as a cautionary tale about liberals who would sell out America and its soldiers in Iraq.

Whether it's true is yet another story.

It is likely an urban legend, said Jerry Lembcke, a Vietnam veteran and Holy Cross College sociologist who researched and wrote a book called "The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam."

More significant, though, said Lembcke and some other historians, is that the spit-upon-veteran story is part of a wider, ongoing and fabricated narrative of betrayal, of Democrats and the "liberal media" stabbing the country in the back.

Republicans in Nevada and nationally are turning to this story of betrayal, hoping to stoke outrage among a restive conservative base grown frustrated with the party on illegal immigration and the growth of government.

Paul Adams, Nevada GOP chairman, launches frequent attacks against Democrats on this score - particularly against Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader - accusing them of selling out our armed forces:

"The Democrat comparison of Iraq to Vietnam becomes eerily self-fulfilling as Democrats propose having Washington politicians dictate military policy on troop levels and timetables. The circle would only be complete if Democrats actually push the U.S. to abandon Iraq to the terrorists."

Nationally, Republicans in Congress held debates recently on Iraq. Although of no policy consequence, the debates allowed GOP incumbents to attack Democrats - accurately or not - for favoring a withdrawal from Iraq, or, in Republican parlance, "cutting and running."

Meanwhile, President Bush and conservative politicians have attacked The New York Times for revealing some tactics about the war on terrorism. Melanie Morgan, a conservative talk-radio host and sometimes cable TV news show guest, said Times Editor Bill Keller should be tried for treason and executed if convicted.

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said the effort is intended to stir passions among conservatives: "This is a pure base-pleaser, and well-trod ground for the GOP" going back to Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., who ran for president in 1964.

Historian Rick Perlstein, who's writing a book about President Richard Nixon and the conservative movement in the late 1960s, said: "A lot of people running the Bush administration learned everything they know about politics from Nixon." He referred to Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in particular. Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser, was in Young Republican politics at the same time, Perlstein noted.

Accusations of infiltration and betrayal go back further than Vietnam, said Kevin Baker, who wrote an essay on the subject in the June edition of Harper's magazine.

He points to post-World War I Germany, where a mythology developed around the idea that the German army would have won the war if they hadn't been stabbed in the back by German politicians. The German word is dolchstoss, or "dagger thrust." And, stories about veterans being spit on were in circulation in post-World War I Germany, too.

Whether the current Republican strategy can work is an open question. This being a nonpresidential-election year, turnout is expected to be low, which means Republicans can win many races with just their most hard-core, conservative base.

David Damore, a UNLV political scientist, said the GOP will have to carry at least some independents, many of whom have turned on Republicans for the conduct of the war, high gasoline prices and a general sense of unease.

"Eventually, people are going to say, 'Look, you've been in power. Take responsibility,' " he said.

Republican incumbents in moderate districts, such as Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev, have the most to lose if voters are turned off by what they perceive to be theatrics rather than substance, Damore said.

For Adams, his attacks are no political ploy, he said. He went to West Point at the tail end of Vietnam and said that he got the cold shoulder when he came home on breaks.

Vietnam was lost at home, he said, and he fears the same will happen in Iraq if Democrats take control of Congress.

Adams' view of Vietnam is shared by a minority of historians, said George Herring, a historian at the University of Kentucky who has written extensively on Vietnam.

"It's a comforting story because it doesn't challenge our notions of invincibility and superiority, but most scholars reject it out of hand," Herring said.

As for veterans being spit on, Herring said, it may have happened, "but it couldn't have happened as much as they say. It's a metaphor."

Lembcke searched news accounts and police reports and could find no mention of a veteran being spit on until the 1980s, well after the war was over. He said he couldn't independently confirm any of the accounts, which began to multiply in the '80s and '90s "like mushrooms in springtime."

He also found some aspects of the stories hard to fathom. They always seemed to involve the airport, even though soldiers would not have returned to civilian airports. Also, if it was happening so frequently at, say, the San Francisco airport, why are there no photographs?

A 1971 Harris Poll conducted by the Veterans Administration found that more than 90 percent of Vietnam veterans said they received a friendly homecoming. Lembcke said he and other veterans were welcomed into the anti-war movement because they helped legitimize it.

Regardless of whether the stories are true, Herring said they will continue:

"It's become Gospel."