GIANFORTE'S DISTINGUISHED PREDECESSOR: JOE McCARTHY

Greg Gianforte won yesterday's Montana special election. Given the large number of early votes, it's not clear how much the candidate's eleventh-hour assault of a reporter affected the race, and if it did, whether it helped him or hurt him. But Democrats certainly narrowed the gap in Montana. Here was 2016 Montana election map in the presidential race:



Now here's the map of yesterday's race (which was statewide, because Montana is a sparsely populated state and therefore has only one House member):



There's a lot more blue on the special election map. In 2012, Mitt Romney won by 13. In 2016, Trump won by 20. Gianforte won by 6. If Democrats can improve on 2016 that much in less red districts, they have a real shot at taking the House in 2018.

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I'm reminded on Twitter that Gianforte has an illustrious Republican predecessor:

Gianforte's body-slam of Guardian reporter is remake of Sen. Joe McCarthy slugging muckraker Drew Pearson at Sulgrave Club, Dec. 12, '50.

— John Gizzi (@johngizzi) May 26, 2017

Yes, that happened:

Pearson became a target of McCarthy and his threats after writing repeatedly and critically about the senator’s bullying tactics, his tax troubles, and his thinly documented allegations about subversives in government....

In December 1950, a 27-year-old socialite named Louise Tinsley (“Tinnie”) Steinman invited Pearson and McCarthy to join her guests at dinner at the Sulgrave. She seated the men at the same table and they traded barbs and insults throughout the evening....

At the Sulgrave, McCarthy repeatedly warned Pearson that he planned to attack the columnist in a speech in the Senate. Pearson in turn chided McCarthy on his tax troubles in Wisconsin.

As the evening ended, McCarthy confronted Pearson in the Sulgrave’s coat check room. Accounts differ about what happened.

Pearson said McCarthy pinned his arms to one side and kneed him twice in the groin. McCarthy said he slapped Pearson, hard, with his open hand. A third account, offered by a radio broadcaster friendly to McCarthy, said the senator slugged Pearson, a blow so powerful that it lifted Pearson three feet into the air.

Richard Nixon, who had recently been sworn in as a U.S. Senator and who was guest at Tinnie Steinman’s party, intervened and broke up the encounter. Nixon, in his memoir RN, said Pearson “grabbed his coat and ran from the room. McCarthy said, ‘You shouldn’t have stopped me, Dick.'” ...

In his 1999 book, Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator, a revisionist treatment of McCarthy, Arthur Herman wrote of the encounter:

“If some were horrified and disgusted with what McCarthy had done, many were not,” given the many enemies that Pearson had made.

A few days later, the senator attacked Pearson on the Senate floor.

From the libel-proof confines of the Senate floor, McCarthy delivered a vicious speech denouncing his nemesis as the “diabolically” clever “voice of international communism,” a “prostitute of journalism,” and a “Moscow-directed character assassin.”

Pearson sued McCarthy for, among other things, libel and assault. McCarthy won that round: He called for a boycott of the company that sponsored Pearson's radio show -- which then dropped its sponsorship.

McCarthy won reelection in 1952. The next year, he became chairman of the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Assaulting a journalist didn't do much harm to Joe McCarthy. It won't hurt Greg Gianforte.