What punishment, if any, did McCarthy receive for his fabricated Communist witch hunt? And, what about his partner in crime, Nixon?
Tailgunner Joe was censured in 1954 by the Senate for abuse of various Senate committees. This is basically a slap on the wrist; he wasn’t expelled and didn’t do jail time, although he deserved to. He died of acute hepatitis due to alcoholism in 1957, so you could argue that that was his punishment.
Nixon wasn’t punished, either (obviously), but his only (real) sin was name-calling, not outright persecution. One could make the argument that Nixon was merely exploiting the red scare for his own benefit. Believe me, it galls me to come out in favor of Nixon, but there you are.
Robin
And Nixon wasn’t “partnered” with McCarthy – the two men came to their red-baiting separately, and did not work together.
I’d love to know what crime you think McCarthy and Nixon were guilty of?
Nixon’s only “crime” was pursuing Alger Hiss, who WAS a Communist spy.
McCarthy’s only crime was being a drunken, exaggerating buffoon.
While it might not be a crime in the legal sense, I’d say lying to the American people, and using the power of the U.S. Senate to destroy the livelihood of innocent witnesses, and to oppress a political minority (AFAIK, the Constitution protects the political thought and expression even of Communists) is certainly a moral crime.
McCarthy’s and Nixon’s crimes were in serving as point men in the anti-labor offensive which began with the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947.
Workers had gained tremendous power in the '30s and 40’s through the mass organizing of basic industries into the industrial unions of the Committee for Industrial Organizing (CIO).
The employers decided after a wave of strikes in 1946 to attack the unions by using the power of the government.
To do this, they first had to attack the Communist Party because a high proportion of the leadership of the unions were members of the Party or were close to the Party. The Communist Party was the brains of the labor movement in those days.
This history is buried very deeply, but it does exist.
You’d think that at least one individual would have sued McCarthy for slander/libel, though.
What about Roy Cohn?
Members of Congress are immune to claims of defamation based on statements made on the floor in the Senate or in the House of Representatives.