Joe McCarthy never called a sitting member of Congress a
communist. The closest I have been able to find is that he called the special
Senate committee that investigated him “'unwitting handmaiden', 'involuntary
agent' and 'attorneys in fact' of the Communist Party". These accusations were considered by the
Senate serious enough to form half of the second of two censure counts. The
Senate voted to condemn McCarthy by a vote of 67-22. How times have changed.
Senator Graham did not bother to mute his attack on his four
colleagues of the other house with the, ever moderate, McCarthy’s tepid
modifiers “unwitting” or “involuntary.” No,
his fellow lawmakers were simply “a bunch of communists.”
In addition, Graham implied that the view that the four
congresswomen are communists was very widely, or perhaps universally held. "We all know
that AOC and this crowd are a bunch of communists.”
We might hope that senators, even Republican senators, would
respond by making it clear that they do not join in Graham’s views. They will
do no such thing. The leader of Graham’s
party, President Trump, might have used the moral authority of his office to
condemn Graham’s remarks. Instead, he retweeted them.
Graham will not be censured. He will not even be criticized
by his Republican colleagues.
Conservative plans to rehabilitate McCarthy
may be unnecessary. Graham has already leapfrogged beyond McCarthy.
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