Regardless of who you’re supporting, I think we can all appreciate this story from the Des Moines Register:
Brownback woos Vietnamese
By TONY LEYS
REGISTER STAFF WRITERU.S. Sen. Sam Brownback made his pitch Saturday evening from an unusual spot.
Over his right shoulder stood the U.S. flag. Over his left stood the yellow-and-red flag of the old South Vietnam.
Brownback, a dark-horse Republican candidate for president, held out his arms, palms up. “I need your help,” he said.
Sixty Vietnamese, most of them refugees, sat in Quyhn’s restaurant on Des Moines’ north side, listening intently as the Kansas senator talked about his support for religious and political freedom around the world, including in their communist-controlled homeland. He recalled how he traveled to Vietnam in 2004 to demand the release of a prominent priest jailed for speaking out.
“One of the first freedoms is what you do with your soul,” he said, as a young woman translated.
Brownback asked the audience members to stand if they fought on the United States’ side during the Vietnam War. About 30 gray-haired people stood. Then he asked how many were imprisoned for it after U.S. troops left their country. Twenty-four stood again.
“I’m impressed with your courage and honor,” he said.
Brownback asked them to support him in the Aug. 11 GOP straw poll in Ames, which will be a nationally publicized test of campaigns’ strength.
Anh Huynh, 42, of Ankeny and president of the Vietnamese Catholic Community, said afterward that about 6,000 Vietnamese live in the Des Moines area. Most of them are U.S. citizens, tend to vote Republican, and know about Brownback’s work for human rights in their homeland, he said.
This was Brownback’s fourth Iowa event of the day, and it was his biggest crowd. He smiled afterward when asked if he thought the audience members would help him win the nomination. Many of these people were imprisoned for their belief in freedom, he said. They might not support him, he said, but they’ll support somebody.
“They fought to vote,” he said. “They bled to vote.”
July 29th, 2007 at 8:26 am
at least he is trying, although Romney will beat him at Ames very badly. I said earlier that the results of the most recent straw poll will be similiar to the results of Ames. Brownback will get a quite 4th or 5th with 5-7% of the vote. I hope that he learns that going negative on Romney wasnt magic in a bottle and did him no favors.
July 29th, 2007 at 11:47 am
Brownback is right to talk about what happened to the Vietnamese people after the Communists took over South Vietnam. I suspect there are a lot of people in America who haven’t heard much about that.
Just last week, John Kerry was quoted as saying, “We heard that argument over and over again about the bloodbath that would engulf the entire Southeast Asia, and it didn’t happen.” Apparently Kerry stopped reading the news from Vietnam once the U.S. troops left. http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110010372
July 29th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
It would be nice for Brownback make a correlation between what happened in Vietnam and his lack of supporting the surge.
July 29th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
I’m afraid you’re right, Jason. The surge has been a tremendous success.
July 29th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
Whats weird is how nice Brownback is in person, and how nasty his campaign is. Why is that?
July 30th, 2007 at 10:17 am
Ron Paul made some statements recently that could be considered highly offensive to Vietnamese. He sais
that “everything was fine after the US pull-out from South Vietnam in 1975.
He ignored the fact that over 1 million South Vietnamese were slaughtered by the North.
And that another 1 million were cast out to sea.
I wonder why he is not being called on this?
July 30th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
[...] coalitions launched include Vietnamese for Brownback, Catholics for Brownback, Taxpayers for Brownback, and Moms for Brownback (with an official website [...]