WI:Joseph McCarthy had died in WW2?

[Gorrister]

When I looked up McCarthy's Wikipedia page,it had turned out that before entering the Senate,he was actually part of the Marine Corps, and he was even a dive bomber.Now what would happen,say he crashed, and didn't make it out alive.

How would the Communist Witch Hunt be affected? Who would take McCarthy's place? Would there be a place holder for McCarthy? But overall what would happen without 'Joe' McCarthy?

 

[Derek Jackson]

Mostly it would be a change in nomenclature,

It might be that blacklisting and such would have gone on longer

McCarthye was a visibly irresponsible drunk

 

[Hoist40]

What "communist witch hunt"? There were communists inside the US government including communist spies.

Also the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) existed separate from Senator McCarthy's Senate committee. The Senator mostly investigate the US government. It was the House which went after Hollywood. The House committee had been around since 1938 when they went after suspected KKK and Nazis

 

[vultan]

His red-baiting niche actually probably gets filled by Richard Nixon (Alger Hiss, anyone?), which will have very interesting effects down the line.

 

[usertron2020]

His red-baiting niche actually probably gets filled by Richard Nixon (Alger Hiss, anyone?), which will have very interesting effects down the line.

Nixon had already made his name with Hiss. Its HUAC that will do all the heavy lifting ITTL. Though other than HUAC's Dies I can't imagine anyone being as irresponsible as McCarthy.

 

[Just a Rube]

What "communist witch hunt"? There were communists inside the US government including communist spies.

There were communist spies inside the government.

There were people on McCarthy's variable-length lists.

The problem was that these two sets had very limited overlap.

 

[1940LaSalle]

I'm not sure there would have been a latter-day (so to speak) red scare anywhere close to what actually happened. Martin Dies was a has-been before McCarthy came on the scene (see, for example, John Gunther's Inside U. S. A. for a contemporary analysis). I don't think, as ruthless as he could be, that Richard Nixon would assume the point position that McCarthy did: Nixon wanted respectability. My guess is that you'd have a lot of lesser types like Indiana's William Jenner (Ike couldn't stand him) waxing and waning rather quickly, each with his own fifteen minutes of fame, more or less.

 

[Gorrister]

Also what about Robert Lafollette Jr.? this may seem weird,but Lafollette Jr. lost to McCarthy in OTL,so who would take McCarthy's place in the Senate, and without 'Tail Gunner Joe',how would Lafollette Jr's political career be affected? Just a side thought.

 

[Duke 4]

No McCarthy, sadly another hater would have taken his place. That one might have had more brains and done more damage to Americans and their civil rights.

 

[Dunning Kruger]

Hoover would have found a different puppet.

 

[Madoc]

Hoover would have found a different puppet.

That actually makes quite a bit of sense. One line of reasoning about Tailgunner Joe is that he was getting "the inside dope" from either Hoover or from the Army Intel folks who could not reveal their sources (Venona Decrypts, for example) lest they be blown.

So, a willing tool helped get their message out about the subversion efforts that the Soviets had been doing for decades.