Joseph McCarthy's method was simple: accuse first, loudly, and let the accusation do the damage that evidence never could. From 1950 to 1954 he claimed communist infiltration everywhere from the State Department to the Army, destroyed careers on the strength of lists he never substantiated, and treated any critic — including members of his own party — as a fellow traveler.
It worked, for a while, because it was politically useful. Colleagues who knew better stayed quiet; the accusations energized a base and intimidated the rest. That's the anatomy of extreme partisanship this wall exists to document: not strong conviction, but the deliberate use of fear and bad faith as political tools, unchecked by fact.
The end came on December 2, 1954, when the Senate voted 67–22 to censure him for conduct "contrary to senatorial traditions" — one of the rare formal condemnations of a sitting senator in American history. His influence collapsed; "McCarthyism" became the permanent name for the tactic.
Entries on this wall follow the same rules as everything else on this site: documented public conduct, cited sources, and criticism of the behavior — not invented claims about the person. The bar for inclusion is the McCarthy test: partisanship so extreme it damaged the institutions it operated in.