I sometimes wonder if both the McCarthy-ite HUAC fiasco and the entire Cold War, with its red scares, weren't political moves designed to demonise socialism and communism in the US, and take away their domestic political influence - which was significant, at least until the 1950s.
Which is not to say the Soviets were admirable, but it's interesting how McCarthyism was the first wave of narrative engineering that pushed the US so far to the right.
I doubt much will move until a new post-Marxist narrative appears, which is as memorable and influential.
Then again, it may be too late for that now. The most likely outcome at the moment is increasing cycles of economic instability creating more and more social and political damage, followed by the collapse of the US.
What happens after that is anyone's guess.
Even during the 1930's, the New Dealers were constantly accused of being communists, and the reason Truman was on the ticket in 1944 was because of the effort to cast the previous VP as being a radical and closet communist. While the governor of CA won election against the socialist, nominated as Democratic candidate, Upton Sinclair under the deal that if FDR did not endorse Sinclair, the governor would not block New Deal programs in California ... that was just a temporary bargain. There never was an acceptance of the New Deal by the conservative wing of the Republican Party, and McCarthy was definitely from that wing. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
And taking over the party was mostly a matter of driving the race-liberal, fiscally conservative Republicans that had been part of the Republican coalition since its founding into the Democratic party while attracting the racist, military-Keynesians from the Democratic party into the Republicans ... and driven as much by the LBJ administration ramming through the Civil Rights and Great Society programs and establishing the massive Democratic advantage in the black vote as by anything that was done inside the Republican party. A modus videndi was sorted out between big government racists conservatives and anti-New Deal reactionaries on who got what say on what issues, and away they went. Nixon was the bridge figure, not a Movement "Conservative" reactionary in his own right, but plenty unethical enough to rely on dogwhistle racist appeals to break the former Solid South in the Electoral College.
Obviously for the professional party establishment that simply wanted power, an inside track in the Electoral College for candidates with "R" after their name was far more important than the reckless and irresponsible policies that the Movement "Conservative" reactionaries actually wanted to enact. Those who were principled moderate Republicans rather than moderate Republicans because that was the path to electoral victory were likely always a minority, perhaps since the decline of the Garfield wing of the party in the late 1800's if not earlier. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
McCarthy was more than a little bit a mental case and brittle to boot. Nixon famously had his paranoid streak but had much greater resilience. Both were supported by Republican reactionaries who wanted to roll back the New Deal--and who now have largely succeeded. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
