In 1954 Gallup conducted a poll that gauged American opinion about American communists. The results offer a useful reminder that bashing Reds (as the current GOP is doing) is an indicator of the potency of the illiberal streak in American political culture.
In 1954, 2/3 of Americans thought the government should be allowed to listen in to the phone conversations of citizens suspected of being Communists, that an admitted Communist should not be allowed to make a public speech, and that books by Communists should be banned.
Most of us remember McCarthyism as a terrible mistake that the nation made in the 1950s. We're far less likely to remember just how many Americans agreed with McCarthy and his right hand man Roy Cohn, who interestingly went on to be a mentor to Donald Trump in the 1970s and 80s.
Also worth remembering that there are folks on today's illiberal right like Ann Coulter who think pretty fondly of good old uncle Joe McCarthy. 
And also that the father of modern "respectable" conservatism, Bill Buckley, wrote this defense of McCarthy in 1954, the year before he started the National Review. His co-author (and brother-in-law) went on to be the ghostwriter of Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative.
Bozell went on to spend a good chunk of his life living in Franco's Spain...because he thought Franco was awesome.
Anyway, in 1954 Gallup showed that 35% of Americans thought positively about McCarthy's committee. That's 1954, the year McCarthy was finally disgraced. There's long been a pretty solid (if not majority) market for illiberalism in American political culture.
There were various institutions and norms that put a check on that illiberalism in 1954. Now one of our two major parties has become the wholly owned subsidiary of the most illiberal president in our history. So when they start bashing reds...watch out.
