Ted Cruz, Texas's New Senator, Gets Schooled Over His Chuck Hagel Campaign [View all]

[TexasTowelie]

There are few Senatorial chapters more infamous than Joe McCarthy's months-long screed against the purported communists infiltrating the American government during the 1950s. The man's grating, acidic line of questions and insinuations have long stood as the apogee of paranoia within Washington.

Indeed, McCarthy's purported search for the closet communists have set the lowest bar for Senatorial decorum, and the man has, rightly, been lambasted ever since. His actions spawned rebuke from all sides. After Joseph Welch's timeless reproach -- "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" -- the questioning, and McCarthy's political career, shriveled. McCarthyism -- the ignorance, the condescension -- has been largely avoided in the seven decades since.

Fortunately, Texas Senator Ted Cruz is here to make sure that McCarthy's memory carries forward to another political generation. And, thanks to Bill Nelson, the senior senator from Florida, we can be assured that Welch won't remain the lone individual willing to castigate those without standing, and without decency.

For those who've not followed, Cruz has spent the last week channeling the ghost of McCarthy, blasting baseless accusations at Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator and President Obama's nominee for Secretary of Defense. The freshman senator seems intent on wringing some sort of Islamist bent from Hagel, parsing verbs and phrases and looking, exegetically, at every single interview and financial source the former senator has ever crossed.

More at http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2013/02/ted_cruz_nelson_hagel.php .