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June 28, 2005
The New McCarthyism
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
In the 1950s the right wing attacked liberals as being
communists. In 2005 Karl Rove has attacked liberals as being
therapists. Thus is born a kinder and gentler form of
McCarthyism.
Named after the late Sen. Joe McCarthy, who never let
the facts get in the way of his lust to charge liberals with
sedition, McCarthyism has come to mean "guilt by
association." What gave McCarthyism its power was the fact
that the senator from Wisconsin did not invent the danger
posed to the United States by Soviet communism. The Soviet
Union was a real threat, and there were real communist spies
working in America.
What made McCarthy and his allies so insidious was
their eagerness to level the "soft on communism" charge
against even staunchly anticommunist liberals. One of them
was Secretary of State Dean Acheson, an architect of Harry
Truman's tough policy of containing Soviet power. In the
1952 presidential campaign, Richard Nixon pounded Democratic
nominee Adlai Stevenson for earning a "PhD from Dean
Acheson's College of Cowardly Communist Containment."
The McCarthyites' real enemies were not communists but
the New Deal liberals who had dominated U.S. politics for 20
years. The McCarthy crowd was willing to divide the nation
at a time of grave international peril if that's what it
took to beat the liberals.
Rove's instantly famous speech last week to the New
York State Conservative Party should be read in light of
this history and not be written off as a cheap, one-time
partisan attack. On the contrary, the address by Rove,
President Bush's most important adviser, provides the
outlines of a sophisticated strategy aimed at making
liberals and Democrats all look soft on terrorism.
Here are the key passages: "Conservatives saw the
savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war;
liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to
prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for
our attackers. In the wake of 9/11, conservatives believed
it was time to unleash the might and power of the United
States military against the Taliban; in the wake of 9/11,
liberals believed it was time to submit a petition. . . .
Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11 and said: 'We
will defeat our enemies.' Liberals saw what happened to us
and said: 'We must understand our enemies.' "
Liberals and Democrats were enraged by Rove because
virtually every officeholding liberal and Democrat closed
ranks behind President Bush on Sept. 11. They endorsed the
use of force against the terrorists and, when the time came,
strongly backed the war in Afghanistan.
But Rove knows how to play this game. The only
evidence he adduces for his therapy charge is a petition in
which the current executive director of MoveOn.org called
for "moderation and restraint" in the wake of Sept. 11. Rove
then slides smoothly from the attack on MoveOn to attacks on
Michael Moore and Howard Dean. Finally, Rove tosses in an
assault on Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) for his statement
that an FBI report on the treatment of prisoners at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, might remind Americans of the
practices of Nazi and communist dictatorships.
In the ensuing controversy, Rove's defenders cleverly
sought to pretend that there was nothing partisan about
Rove's speech. "Karl didn't say 'the Democratic Party,' "
insisted Ken Mehlman, the Republican national chairman. "He
said 'liberals.' " It must have been purely accidental that
one of the "liberals" mentioned was the Democratic national
chairman and another was the Senate Democratic whip. It must
also have been accidental that both of them, like most other
liberals, supported the war in Afghanistan, not therapy. At
the time, Durbin called the war "essential."
On Friday White House spokesman Scott McClellan
narrowed the Rove attack even more. McClellan found it
"puzzling" that Democrats were "coming to the defense of
liberal organizations like MoveOn.org and people like
Michael Moore," when in fact Democrats were coming to their
own defense. McClellan also ignored what Mehlman had
conceded the day before -- and what the text of Rove's
remarks plainly shows: that Rove was attacking liberals
generally, not just these two targets.
That's how guilt by association works. Make a charge
and then -- once your attack is out there -- pretend that
your words have been misinterpreted. Split your opponents.
Put them on the defensive. Force them to say things like:
"No, we're not soft on terrorism," or, "I'm not that kind of
liberal." Once this happens, the attacker has already won.
Respectable opinion treats Rove's speech as just
another partisan flap. It's much more. It's the
reincarnation of a style of politics that turns political
opponents into traitors or dupes who are soft on the
nation's enemies. Welcome back to the '50s.
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