REPUBLICAN ROLE MODEL OF THE DAY # 3
SENATOR JOSEPH McCARTHY After World War II McCarthy ran against Robert La Follette to become Republican candidate for the senate. Campaign posters pictured him in "full fighting gear, with an aviator's cap, and belt upon belt of machine gun ammunition wrapped around his bulky torso." He claimed he had completed thirty-two missions when in fact he had a desk job and only flew in training exercises. Sound familiar?
McCarthy attacked La Follette who was forty-six when Pearl Harbor had been bombed, and was too old to join the armed services for not enlisting. On his first day in the Senate, he proposed a solution to a coal-strike that was taking place. McCarthy called for John L. Lewis and the striking miners to be drafted into the Army. If the men still refused to mine the coal, McCarthy suggested they should be court-martialed for insubordination and shot.
McCarthy's first years in the Senate were unimpressive. People also started coming forward claiming that he had lied about his war record. he was being investigated for tax offences and for taking bribes from the Pepsi-Cola Company. In May, 1950, afraid that he would be defeated in the next election. Edmund Walsh, a Roman Catholics priest, came up with the idea that he should begin a campaign against communist subversives working in the Democratic administration.
McCarthy an alcoholic and Roy Cohen savaged witnesses and misused the investigative power of the Senate until censured by the Senate in 1955. He died of alcoholism shortly thereafter.