ABSTRACT
On May 9, 1953, Eisenhower’s friend from the General Mills Corporation, Harry Bullis, warned the President “that the Senator has unlimited personal ambitions, unmitigated gall, and unbounded selfishness. Democratic Minority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson was quick to exploit the GOP’s dilemma. In a speech before the Gridiron Club on April 11 he ridiculed the failure to control McCarthy by saying: They have the Republican Party of President Eisenhower. McCarthy’s staff had examined the agency’s bibliography thoroughly. The Senator soon charged that there were over thirty thousand volumes on the shelves by “Communist” authors. The Democratic members of McCarthy’s committee demanded Matthews’s ouster; but the Senator, asserting that he as chairman had control over staff appointments, at first resisted such efforts. Robert Donovan has noted McCarthy’s predicament during the summer of 1953 by observing that the incidents had brought the Senator to a low point, one which marked the start of his decline.
