Recall that this was very effective in the primaries at grabbing the headlines:
From: http://abcnews.go.com/...
"Shame on you, Barack Obama," she said in Cincinnati. "It is time you ran a campaign consistent with your messages and public. That's what I expect from you. Meet me in Ohio. Let's have a debate about your tactics and your behavior on this campaign."
Barack, or perhaps Barack and Hillary can make a joint appearance and repeat the shame on you business with regard to the "Straight Talk Express" becoming the Bullshit Express.
More below...
The Politico article tonight does a great job at detailing the recent lies from the McCain campaign in Wheels Come Off The Straight Talk Express: http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/...
There's the NY Times article
First came a front-page New York Times piece noting that McCain "has drawn an avalanche of criticism this week from Democrats, independent groups and even some Republicans for regularly stretching the truth." There was also an accompanying fact-check of McCain's latest TV ad, which called it the "latest in a number that resort to a dubious disregard for the facts."
Then the fact there was this whopper:
The Washington Post gave "four Pinnochios" to McCain's recent assertion on "The View" that Palin never took earmarks as Alaska governor. Then the Boston Globe reported that Palin didn't really travel inside Iraq as has been claimed. And Bloomberg News said that the McCain camp may not have been exactly truthful in estimating the size of its recent crowds. "Now officials say they can't substantiate the figures McCain's aides are claiming."
The McCain campaign doesn't even care...
To top it off, McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said this to the Politico about the increased media scrutiny of the campaign's factual claims: "We’re running a campaign to win. And we’re not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it."
So the Obama camp responded with this
To: Press Corps
From: Obama Campaign
Re: Unraveling the myth of the Straight Talk Express
Since naming Governor Palin as their Vice Presidential nominee, the McCain campaign has distorted, distracted, and outright lied to the American people about her record in a desperate attempt to hide the fact that a McCain/Palin Administration would be nothing more than a continuation of the failed Bush policies of the last eight years.
Indeed, today alone we learned that the McCain campaign’s claim that Governor Palin traveled to Iraq is a lie. In fact, she didn’t cross the Kuwait border. We learned that the McCain campaign is desperate enough to tell the press phony crowd numbers, which they falsely attributed to local elected officials and the United States Secret Service. And we learned that despite Senator McCain’s claim that Governor Palin is a fiscal conservative, spending actually increased during her brief tenure as Governor.
Here are the facts. Governor Palin supported the Bridge to Nowhere, requested hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks, never visited Iraq, increased spending as governor, increased taxes as governor, and was about as successful selling that luxury jet on eBay as the McCain campaign has been selling her reputation as a reformer. Oh yeah, and the gas pipeline she touts won’t be usable for at least a decade, if it’s completed at all.
While the media is slowly starting to call the McCain campaign on their dishonest tactics, McCain’s staff boasts that they don’t care. As a McCain spokesman told the Politico, "We’re running a campaign to win. And we’re not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it."
Here's how I think Barack should handle this at a press conference
[Barack with printouts of the factcheck.org article, and such]
Shame on you John McCain: The straight talk express has clearly derailed. You have shown a willful disregard for the truth, and you are misleading the American people. We've already have almost 8 years of a president that has gone out of his way to not be straight with the American people, and you are proving that you would be just as bad. The people of America want a president who will tell them the truth, and not disregard the facts when they don't fit inside the small box of their ideology.
So shame on you John McCain, it's time you ran a campaign consistent with the logo printed on your bus.
It would certainly help to have Hillary nodding in the background just like Ted Strickland did in the original Hillary "Shame on you" bit.