Well, it WORKED that time, didn’t it? Of course Smathers could have just called him a Commie...they didn’t call him “Red Pepper” for no reason!;)
In that same election, Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas (R-Calif.), a leftie known as the "Pink Lady" lost her bid for a Senate seat to Rep. Richard Nixon (R-Calif.), and Rep. Vito Marcantonio (R-NY), who slavishly followed the Communist Party line also lost his previously save House seat. The 1950 election, coming as it did in the wake of the fall of China, the detonation of a nuclear device by the Soviets, a string of spy scandals and the outbreak of the Korean War, was not a good one for pinkos and lefties.