The Current Need for Senators Like Margaret Chase Smith

Seventy years ago, Senator Margaret Chase Smith delivered her “Declaration of Conscience” speech. I don’t usually praise Republican senators, but Smith was a courageous politician, and the country needs more like her today.*¹ 

Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) was a U.S. Senator from 1947 until his death at age 48 in 1957. He became widely known nationwide after giving a speech to the Republican Women's Club of Wheeling, W.V., in February 1950.

In that speech, McCarthy showed a piece of paper that he claimed contained a long list of known Communists working for the U.S. government. He declared, "The State Department is infested with Communists.” That was the beginning of the so-called “Red Scare” that soon spread across the U.S.*²

According to Wikipedia, “Barely a month after McCarthy’s Wheeling speech, the term ‘McCarthyism’ was coined by Washington Post cartoonist Herbert Block.” He and others “used the word as a synonym for demagoguery, baseless defamation, and mudslinging.” 

Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine) was a U.S. Senator from 1949~73. She died 30 years ago (in May 1995) at the age of 97, the last living senator to have been born in the 19^th century. She became widely known nationwide after giving a speech on the Senate floor on June 1, 1950.

In that speech, Smith presented a “Declaration of Conscience,” which was endorsed by six other Republican senators. It embraced five statements, the first of which began, “We are Republicans. But we are Americans first.” And here is the fifth statement in full:

It is high time that we stopped thinking politically as Republicans and Democrats about elections and started thinking patriotically as Americans about national security based on individual freedom. It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques—techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.

Sen. Smith called for the country, the Senate, and the Republican Party to re-examine the tactics used by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and (without naming him) Senator McCarthy.

Where are the senators like Margaret Chase Smith today? Despite all the malicious things done and said by the current POTUS, to this point there has been hardly any dissenting voice coming from the Republican senators (or House representatives). This is a real and present danger to the U.S.

Eminent lawyer and law professor Alan Dershowitz’s book War on Woke: Why the New McCarthyism Is More Dangerous Than the Old was published last year, and it merits our attention.

Dershowitz contends that the new McCarthyism challenges the basic tenets of the classic liberal (in the traditional sense) state: Freedom of expression; due process; presumption of innocence, right to counsel, equal application of the law; and tolerance and respect for differing viewpoints.*³

I disagree with the honorable law professor when in the Introduction he states that the “bedrock principles” just mentioned are “rejected by McCarthyite extremists on both the hard left and the hard right.” He seems to go out of his way to endorse “bothsidesism.”

All the “basic tenets” mentioned above are being primarily disregarded by the President and ignored by the top Republican politicians.

Now, five full months after the inauguration of Trump 2.0, is high time for conscientious Republican senators and House members to step up and speak out against the undemocratic policies of the POTUS and his tendency toward embracing fascism.

There is some limited Republican opposition to Pres. Trump, dating back to his first term. That is mainly seen in Sen. Susan Collins (from Maine, like Smith), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), and also Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) since 2024.

Currently, there is also some opposition by fiscal conservatives such as Sen. Rand Paul (also from Ky.) and Ron Johnson (Wis.).

In addition, there are also a few GOP senators opposing the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” passed by the House at the end of May. That opposition is seen mostly in statements made by Senators Josh Hawley (Mo.), Jerry Moran (Kan.), Thom Tillis (N.C.), and John Curtis (Utah).

Still, most Republican senators vote in lockstep with the President. What the country badly needs, though, are politicians like Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who for the good of the nation will speak out against not only their own Party’s senators but especially the President.

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*¹ I am indebted to Heather Cox Richardson for prompting me to write this blog article. Her May 31 newsletter was a long, informative piece about Sen. Smith.

*² It is noteworthy that Clay Risen’s 460-page book Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America was published earlier this year. He writes in the Preface that “Trumpism and the MAGA movement” is not the same “as McCarthyism and the John Birch Society. But there is a line linking them” (viii). It is also worth noting that McCarthy's primary lawyer, Roy Cohn (1927~86), was also Donald Trump's lawyer in 1973 when the Justice Department accused Trump of violating the Fair Housing Act.

*³ Dershowitz (born in 1938 and about two weeks younger than me) became Harvard Law School's youngest full professor and is now Emeritus Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law.