In McCarthy's era, most of the GOP's leaders avoided challenging conspiracy theories they knew to be implausible, even as their costs to the nation mounted

The silence of congressional Republican leaders as President Donald Trump's unfounded claims of election fraud grow wilder and more venomous increasingly resembles the party's deference to Sen. Joe McCarthy during the worst excesses of his anti-Communist crusade in the early 1950s.

from CNN.com - RSS Channel - HP Hero https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/01/politics/gop-silence-trump-false-election-claims-mccarthy/index.html
via https://www.cnn.com/index.html