Senate Votes 67-22 to Censure Joseph McCarthy Ending Four Years of Terror

On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted 67-22 to censure Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had led the fight in Congress to root out suspected Communists from the Federal Government. The Democrats voted solidly for McCarthy’s rebuke, but Republicans split straight down the middle with 22 voting for and 22 against. The Senate censured McCarthy “for his non-cooperation with and abuse of the Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections… in 1952” and “for abuse of the Select Committee to Study Censure” of 1954. The censure described his behavior as “contrary to senatorial traditions.”

Republican Senators Ralph Flanders of Vermont, Arthur Watkins of Utah, and Margaret Chase Smith of Maine led the efforts to discipline McCarthy. On July 30, 1954, Flanders introduced a resolution calling for censure. The resolution moved forward with debate beginning July 30, 1954, and the full Senate took up the resolution on November 5. The original resolution contained 46 counts of misconduct, which a select committee condensed to five categories before ultimately recommending censure on two grounds related to obstruction and abusive conduct toward investigative bodies.

McCarthy tried to appear unaffected by the censure, but it became apparent that the Senate vote had robbed him of his power and status. McCarthy’s friends claimed a partial victory because the final resolution “condemned” rather than “censured” McCarthy, but McCarthy himself referred to the action as a censure. As his political fortunes waned, so did his health. He died in 1957 at age 48. The censure came more than four years after McCarthy’s Wheeling speech and only after he had destroyed hundreds of careers, purged the State Department of Asia expertise, and established templates for political persecution that would echo through American politics for decades. The delayed accountability demonstrated institutional reluctance to constrain authoritarian demagogues even when their methods violated democratic norms.