The "Have You No Shame, Sir?" Strategy: How Dems Can Regain Message Control
"Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
And it is with those words, spoken by Joseph Nye Welch to Senator Joe McCarthy, that a career was over, and along with it an ugly season of confusion and pain upon the American consciousness.
It's about time progressives follow a similar strategy to fight against GOP maliciousness. Some have already signaled that such a thing is in the air.
If you've yet to read the latest column by Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein, it's a doozy.
Responding to yesterday's column by GOP head Michael Steele, Pearlstein blasts Steele with a scathing litany of turnabout-is-fair-play, the purpose of which "is to highlight the lies, distortions and political scare tactics that Steele and other Republicans have used to poison the national debate over health reform." Pearlstein concludes with echoed words directed at Steele: "Have you no shame, sir? Have you no shame?"
The Mainstream Media Eats Soundbytes, So Let's Feed Them
At every town hall, in progressive media and the blogosphere, every GOP operative and lawmaker needs to hear an unending stream of this soundbyte mantra until mainstream media outlets have no choice but to make it a dominant theme of their coverage.
"Have you no shame, sir? Have you no shame?"
We can well imagine how that might play out on, for one example, Anderson Cooper 360. "Does the GOP have any shame, and what are its critics saying they have no shame about?"
Let's pound this soundbyte and thereby regain control of the message!
"Have you no shame, sir? Have you no shame?"