ABSTRACT
As the 80th Congress convened in Washington, the newly ensconced Republican majority vowed to cleanse the nation of all remaining communists—especially those burrowed in the bureaucracy. Richard M. Nixon's virulent anticommunism provided a strong emotional context to the campaign. The anticommunist ripples created by this stunning Republican turnaround reached until the end of the Cold War. Terrorism has a horrible effect on countries, but so, in its own way, does a kind of low-grade fearism. From the end of the Second World War until the fall of the Berlin Wall, people in America country were on edge, partly because of the atomic bomb, and partly because they faced an enemy that seemed capable of burrowing inside their minds. Such absolutism distorted America's politics. What were essentially political issues in 1945-1950 became questions about patriotism. A November 1950 survey demonstrates just how badly the New Deal coalition was hurt by the Cold War.
