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| Source:CBS News- U.S. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (Republican, Wisconsin) Chairman of the Senate Investigative Committee (83rd Congress) |
“In the first Face the Nation broadcast on television, Sen. Joseph McCarthy responds to questions about his infamous hearings. (CBS NEWS)”
From CBS News
Senator McCarthy’s power in Congress was pretty much over at this point with Democrats winning back Congress in 1954. With McCarthy’s credibility and reputation being ruined with the McCarthy hearings and with the Senate censoring him in late 1954.
Joe McCarthy would be dead in less than two years after this interview was conducted. His political career essentially over as far as being a force in Congress and even in the Senate. With Congressional Democrats taking full control over Congress both the House and Senate in 1954, 56, and 58. And with a Republican Party that was behind Dwight Eisenhower and against McCarthy style fascism.
Do I believe Joe McCarthy was an anti-communist? Of course I do which is what even most Democrats were at this point, even the Far-Left of the party, at least to a certain extent. Do I believe Senator McCarthy believed there were Communists in the U.S. Government? Well based on the evidence that he and his staff brought to the committee and what his own Republican members were saying about these hearings, I would say no. But of course I can’t get into the man’s head, but perhaps he was seeing and believing things that simply weren’t there. Or this was simply about taking advantage of the so-called Red Scare in America and using it to further one’s own political career.
The whole McCarthy hearings were exactly about that and trying to look so anti-communist that you believed that communism was so evil and had no business in the U.S. Government, but that perhaps Communists had no right to exist and even be free in America. This was using what so-called anti-Communists say Communists use against people who are to the right of them. Which is most of the political spectrum, but using fascism and saying, “we are the good guys and they are the bad guys” to the point that we are on the side of good and should be treated as such. While they are evil and have no right to exist at all.”
