GOP's Darrell Issa - A Failed Would be Modern Day Joe McCarthy

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Not only do many in the Republican Party want to take the nation back to the Gilded Age with all of its abuses of the poor and working classes, but some Republicans in Congress also seem to want to return to the days of Joe McCarthy and the trampling on rights of citizens.  A case in point?  The always despicable Darrell Issa.  Thankfully, the effort seems to be failing. A column in the Washington Post looks at Issa's demagoguery.  Here are excerpts:

I have here in my hand a list of six people who think Darrell Issa is a fellow traveler of Joseph McCarthy. I compiled these names while watching Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, lead his panel’s proceedings Thursday to hold former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress.

[T]he Democrats are wrong. Darrell Issa is no Joe McCarthy.  It’s not for lack of trying. As I’ve noted, the California Republican, during his lamentable tenure running the committee, has been reckless, dishonest, vain and prone to making unsubstantiated accusations. 

But Issa’s McCarthyism is a faint echo of the real thing, for one very important reason. McCarthy was feared; Issa isn’t taken seriously. This is a rare bit of good news about modern politics: It’s a bad time to be a demagogue.

There may be some who fear Issa, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) or other practitioners of neo-McCarthyism. But at least as many are unafraid to call these men dangerous or buffoons. This is largely because there is no enemy that poses the sort of threat the Soviet Union did. But there is also a felicitous side effect of the polarization of the two parties: Because there is no longer ideological overlap, as there was in the 1950s, Democrats are unafraid to challenge the likes of Issa.

Strains of demagoguery run through both parties, of course.
On the right, Cruz has specialized in McCarthy-like allegations, suggesting, for example, that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel may have been on the payroll of Saudi Arabia or North Korea.
But in neither case is the opposition intimidated by the allegations.

Consider the efforts of Issa, who famously said the IRS targeting of conservative groups was “coordinated in all likelihood right out of Washington headquarters — and we’re getting to proving it.” Instead, he ended up fixing blame on Lerner, a career employee at the IRS who took the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer questions from Issa’s committee. Issa claimed she had waived her Fifth Amendment rights, and this week his committee voted to hold her in contempt.

The way to fight McCarthyism is to denounce its purveyors — ad hominem and ad infinitum.