Seeing that opposition and publicity were what gave McCarthy his power, he looked for a better opportunity. Eisenhower began to work behind the scenes, directing and pushing for others to limit McCarthy’s power, stripping the man of allies, using his own allies to criticize him, removing opportunities McCarthy would have liked to take advantage of. It’s because of this use of the “hidden hand” that McCarthy never knew that the president was working against him, and so when Eisenhower crushed McCarthy, and crushed him completely using the man’s weaknesses against him, it would be decades before
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