Never has there been a senator who has made more of an impact upon American political affairs than Joseph McCarthy. His obsessive quest to find communists in the American society ruined the lives of many innocent American people- federal and state employees, movie stars, lawyers, union members, teachers and preachers. These people were accused of being communists without being given a valid chance to defend themselves, and as a result their reputations were soiled. The technique that McCarthy used to accuse his victims was simple. He made an accusation of disloyalty against the individual and then moved on to another case before the accused had a chance to respond and defend themselves. The senator, who caused this great hysteria throughout America, or the "Red Scare", convinced the American public that there were Communists living among them, and he was the only force that could unmask them. If anyone dared disagree with his tactics then they themselves faced accusat!.
ions of being a communist.
McCarthy won the general election for a senatorial position in 1946, but he soon began to irritate his older colleagues in the Republican Party. He was soon known for his "disregard for the unwritten rules and customs of the Senate. McCarthy continually reduced disagreements over policy to personal attacks upon his opponents, often imputing unsavory motives to their actions" (Klingaman 255). McCarthy soon realized that he needed to find a new issue to attract favorable publicity. That new issue was Communism. He launched a campaign against Communism while giving a speech to the Republican Women's Club in Wheeling, West Virginia on February 9, 1950. That day McCarthy proclaimed: .
" I have here in my hand a list of two hundred and five people that were known to the Secretary of the State as being members of the Communistic part, and who, nevertheless, are still working and shaping the policy in the State Department" (Zeinert 9).
