Can Trump Win Against the Military?

I hate to start off with a cliché, but every once in a while history really does repeat itself, and I think it’s happening right now with Donald Trump.

Back in the day there was a Senator from Wisconsin named Joseph McCarthy. In 1950 he made a speech in which he claimed that the State Department was a nesting place for Communists who were planning to turn America into a Soviet-style state.

This speech set off the anti-Communist hysteria of the 1950’s, with McCarthy leading investigations into Communist influence in labor unions, Hollywood, and the Truman Administration, among other targets. In effect, the alleged existence and behavior of all these secret Communist sympathizers and activists was McCarthy’s version of the Deep State.

What finally ended McCarthy’s political career and his anti-Communist crusade was when he began investigating alleged Communist subversion in the Army, beginning with what he claimed was a secret Communist cabal working in the Army Signal Corps at Fort Monmouth. This 1954 attack on the military forced the Senate to move against McCarthy who was censured and allowed to remain in office but lost his investigative authority and quickly faded away.

In other words, what you don’t do in American politics is use the military as an attack point and expect to have a successful political…