Where Is Our Margaret Chase Smith?

I knew Margaret Chase Smith. She was a friend of mine. And Susan Collins, neither you nor any other Republican senator or representative is a Margaret Chase Smith. The time to change that it NOW.

By any objective standard, the United States is presently facing the nation’s gravest threat in the lifetimes of most living Americans. As the days go by, it becomes ever plainer that it is the worst threat since the Civil War—or ever in our history. Donald Trump and his minions have undertaken an all-encompassing blitzkrieg on American institutions, values, freedoms, democracy, and common decency. And this week they seek to enact a piece of legislation that would further decimate much of the good the government does, rip health care away from millions of Americans, force the closures of numerous rural hospitals, take food from children, and massively increase the federal debt, among other horrors—all for the purpose of further enriching billionaires.

All of that will be so unpopular that it would almost certainly lead to a major defeat of the Republicans in the midterm elections next year—if we have free elections by then, which does not seem to be in Trump’s plans.

How can the end of the American Experiment in freedom and self-governance be averted?

The answer, I think, may begin by drawing attention to a speech that was delivered seventy-five years ago this month by a freshman senator from Maine, then the only woman in the upper chamber of Congress.

The only ones currently with the power to stop this unspeakable catastrophe are congressional Republicans.

Almost all decent, patriotic Republicans in Congress who are privately horrified at what the President is doing are going along because they fear losing office—or they or their families being assaulted by thugs who support the Leader.

---

Welcome back to “Musings & Amusings,” and greetings to those of you who are new.

A Request:

The number of subscribers to this publication is growing rapidly, and I am grateful for that. I know there are many publications on Substack that are “must-reads” and most of us have limited resources. I am very much in that category. I really do need to have a much larger fraction of my growing readership become paid subscribers.

So … I request that those of you for whom it would not be a financial burden upgrade now.

Click here to become a paid subscriber:

---

This is, though, not the first time a bully willing to say anything that would get him attention and to smear anyone who crossed him has had the erstwhile Party of Lincoln cowering in fear. It happened before, when Donald Trump was but a wee lad, at the beginning of the 1950s, and a courageous woman who stood up against it points us toward a road out of the far more perilous situation we face now.

Seventy-five years ago, as I discussed in a piece here in February, Wisconsin Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy burst into nationwide headlines by making baseless allegations that the Truman State Department was riddled with known Communists. This sensational charge allowed McCarthy to jump to the drum major position at the head of a parade of charging people with being communists that had already been started by Richard Nixon and others.

McCarthy cared no more about the truth and no less about being the center of attention than Trump and his wild accusations destroyed the lives of many people. While a Democrat was in the White House, most Republicans were ready to suspend their consciences and go along with McCarthy’s baseless allegations both because they were politically useful to the party and because crossing McCarthy could end their political careers.

“Where’s my Roy Cohn?” Donald Trump would ask whenever he faced serious legal problems. Cohn, as a key advisor to McCarthy and later the mentor to Trump, teaching him the disinformation techniques that he has so effectively employed, is one link between that terrible time in American history and the present one. Another such connection has the potential to be much more positive.

On the first day of June seventy-five years ago, Margaret Chase Smith delivered her first speech in the United States Senate, “A Declaration of Conscience,” in which she denounced the reign of fear and cowardice that was allowing an ignorant bully to pervert the ideals of both America and the Republican party.

Like children—and women—in those days, freshmen senators were expected to be seen and not heard. Smith waited for some of her Republican colleagues to speak up against McCarthy, but the “great psychological fear ... spread to the Senate where a considerable amount of mental paralysis and muteness set in for fear of offending McCarthy.” She felt the need to take a stand.

“Too much harm has already been done with irresponsible words of bitterness and selfish political opportunism,” Sen. Smith said. Many of her lines from three-quarters of a century ago speak directly to us today. “I think that it is high time that we remembered that we have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution,” she declared.

“Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism.”

In perhaps the most remembered line, which speaks directly to her party today, Smith said she wanted Republicans to win, “but I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.”

“We are Republicans. But we are Americans first,” Smith said in words that are so much needed from officeholders in her party in the present crisis. “It is as Americans that we express our concern with the growing confusion that threatens the security and stability of our country.”

So much of what Sen. Smith said on that day shortly before Donald Trump’s fourth birthday and just over 21 years before Elon Musk was born in apartheid South Africa seems as if it had been written about what they are doing now. A few more examples:

“a Republican regime embracing a philosophy that lacks political integrity or intellectual honesty would prove equally disastrous to the nation."

“As an American, I want to see our nation recapture the strength and unity it once had when we fought the enemy instead of ourselves.”

“Certain elements of the Republican party have materially added to this confusion in the hopes of riding the Republican party to victory through the selfish political exploitation of fear, bigotry, ignorance, and intolerance.”

“It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques—techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.”

“Mrs. Smith read the ‘Declaration of Conscience’ from the floor,” the New York Times reported, “as Senator McCarthy sat white and silent three feet behind her.”

Six other Republican senators joined in signing the “Declaration of Conscience.” How many would do so in 2025? Sen. McCarthy dismissed Smith and her supporters as “Snow White and the Six Dwarfs.” (A fixation on “dwarfs” appears to be another thing Trump shares with McCarthy.)

Drawing attention to Margaret Chase Smith’s courage and the points she made that speak so forcefully to us in the present crisis might help to persuade a few congressional Republicans to emulate her and stand up to Trump. Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins often portrays herself as a latter-day Margaret Chase Smith, but she has repeatedly made a mockery of that claim.

If some Republican, perhaps Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, could make a well-publicized “Declaration of Conscience” and get at least three other Republican senators and a small number of Republicans in the House to join her or him, it would constitute an important step in saving the American Experiment.

Republicans must ask themselves right now whether holding onto their offices is worth the price of going down in history as people who had an opportunity to preserve the American Experiment but chose self-interest instead. North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis made that decision over the weekend. Those who do stand up for what America has been at its best will be remembered by history as heroes, as Margaret Chase Smith is. Fourteen years after her first Senate speech, she became the first woman whose name was put in nomination for the presidency at a major party convention.

So far, though, today’s Republicans seem content to write their names in the thick history book titled “Profiles in Cowardice.”

I came to know Margaret Chase Smith in the 1970s and greatly respected her. Though it’s an exaggeration to say we were friends, we did get along wonderfully for the few days we were together and I’ll close with a riff on Lloyd Bentsen as a message to members of the Article One branch of government:

I knew Margaret Chase Smith. She was a friend of mine. And Susan Collins, neither you nor any other Republican senator and representative is a Margaret Chase Smith. The time to change that it NOW.

Where’s our Margaret Chase Smith?