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1. I'm wondering if anyone's written a book about the place of Joseph McCarthy in American political memory. I'm moved to ask this because today over a dozen MAGA fans informed me that "McCarthy did nothing wrong." This surprised me, so I did some digging.
2. In 1983, Roy Cohn (who was one of Donald Trump's closest associates and mentors at that time), said "I think up and down Middle America, when you get away from the hotbeds of liberalism like New York and Washington, I find Senator McCarthy is held in very high esteem."
3. As these gallup results show, McCarthy's approval ratings in 1954, even after the disgraceful Army hearings, were still north of 30% and his disapproval was below 50%. 
4. I would be curious to see how McCarthy's reputation ebbed and flowed from 1954 up through the present. Was Roy Cohn right about the general approval of McCarthy in the midwest in the 1980s?
5. Is the "McCarthyism = bad" truism in American politics not really a widely-held truism...but rather, something that only 2/3 or less of Americans believe?
6. To what extent do opinions about McCarthy map on to partisan affiliation or voting patterns in the 2016 election? My guess would be that most Dems would revile McCarthy, but what % of Republicans would say they have a positive opinion of him today?
7. Thinking about the "McCarthy did nothing wrong" constituency in American politics got me thinking about the "Nixon did nothing wrong" crew. We tend to forget that even after Watergate, Nixon was still supported by almost 1/4 of Americans.
8. Would love to see a poll that correlated opinions about Trump with opinions about other figures in American history like Nixon, Reagan, and McCarthy.
FWIW. I especially like the last one...I hit two birds with one stone there.
