Steve Deace listens to a grainy Joseph McCarthy clip from 1950 and argues that the senator’s warning about a small, radical wing inside the Democratic Party looks eerily accurate today; guests on Deace’s show, including Aaron McIntire, back that view and point to modern left rhetoric as evidence that a vocal, organized faction has shifted the party’s center of gravity toward socialism and away from traditional patriotism.
What McCarthy said in 1950 landed like a grenade and never really stopped echoing. “There are definitely two groups of Democrats as of today,” McCarthy began. “Number one, there are the millions of loyal Americans who have voted the Democrat tickets. Individuals who are just as loyal, who hate communism just as much and love America just as much as the average Republican.”
Those lines aimed to split ordinary voters from a smaller, more dangerous core, and the follow up was even sharper. “On the other hand, there is that small, closely knit group of administration Democrats who are now the complete prisoners and under the complete domination of the bureaucratic communistic Frankenstein, which they themselves have created,” he continued.
McCarthy closed with a line built to sting and to stick in the mind of anyone watching the political theater. “To call them Democrats is an insult to the millions of loyal American Democrats. They shouldn’t be called Democrats.They should be referred to properly as the Commie-crat Party,” he added.
Listening decades later, Deace is blunt: “Joseph McCarthy wasn’t wrong. He was just early,” Deace says after listening to McCarthy’s warning. He treats the clip as historical context that helps explain why modern conservatives react the way they do to certain Democratic factions that loudly embrace radical labels.
Aaron McIntire echoes the sentiment with an edge. “Absolutely, he was right. And essentially what he’s saying in that clip is that not all Democrats are communists, but all communists are Democrats, which is something that for the last 15, 20 years that you’ve been on the air, Steve, you could have said every day that ends in ‘y’ and twice on Sundays,” Aaron McIntire agrees. That’s meant to be a jab and a diagnosis in one.
Part of the argument hinges on language: radicals rebrand their goals to sound kinder and softer, and voters often accept the softer language without testing the ideas. “I don’t really know how much clearer it could be at this point, because … not only are they out of the shadows, they are loud and proud about it at this point,” he says, pointing out that they call themselves “socialists” to soften what they stand for.
McIntire and Deace both call out the euphemisms. “They want to call themselves ‘those who stand in solidarity’ like that moron from New York said, ‘Solidarity means abolishing ICE,’” he continues, adding, “They want to cloak themselves in a lot of euphemisms, but at the heart of it, they are communists. So he was right on the money, just ahead of his time.” That line is meant to force listeners to square the words politicians use with the policies they pursue.
The overall tone here is not academic; it’s pointed and unapologetic. By playing the old clip and pairing it with modern commentary, Deace and his guest want to make a political point that’s also a warning: when a vocal faction within a party embraces radical ideas openly, ordinary voters risk being represented by people who do not share their basic values.
Conservatives hearing this will find comfort in the argument’s clarity, while opponents will call it caricature. Either way, the pairing of McCarthy’s language with current rhetoric creates a narrative conservatives can use to caution fellow voters about where certain phrases and policies might lead. The clip is old, but the conversation it sparks is very much alive, sharp, and intentionally uncomfortable for those being called out.
