One source says the word McCarthyism was coined by Washington Post political cartoonist Herbert Block (Herblock).
Another source makes more sense to me. To wit, it was the Soviet-financed and controlled CP/USA invention. That makes more sense to me because it was the Communists' 24/7 job to discredit anti-communists.
Besides an American, even one as left-wing as Herblock, would have IMO come up with calling the Senator a sot. Herblock's images of McCarthy clearly portrayed a drunk. Perhaps Herblock picked up the word at one of his cell meetings. :)
As is the wont of the left, the real issues are swept aside and the person raising the issues becomes the issue. It seems to work every time, ask Ann Coulter.
History has proved that McCarthy's issues were mostly on target and therefore (IMO) the correct definition of the word should be the one that he adopted once the Communists' pejorative version was out there.
Nevertheless, McCarthy was certainly charismatically challenged.
Of course, it's considerably more difficult to overturn conventional wisdom 50 years after the fact...
We'd better get real busy correcting the misconception about the meaning of swift boating.
Here's an example of the former: a news item about the recent passing of 89-year-old Mr. Mel Fiske, "a member of Communist Party U.S.A. [who] worked as a reporter for the party's newspaper, the Daily Worker, from 1940 until 1956, when he realized Soviet-style communism was not aligned with his vision of a socialist utopia."
(Of course 1956 was when Khruschev admitted the truth about Stalin causing many "American" Communists to leave the Party and -- some say -- spawning the New Left when the Party's young turned to Mao and their own plans for revolution and "paradise.")
Here's the funny part: "As a reporter for the Daily Worker he covered Congress, the Supreme Court, the White House and the Pentagon, focusing on the opposition to labor organizing, political dissent and the rise of McCarthyism."
The San Francisco Chronicle employee is totally oblivious to the absurdity; to wit, a Communist reporting on the rise of an evil that was looking for something (Communists) who many wanted us to believe didn't exist -- or at least Mr. Fiske the Communist was busy stirring up hatred against that "evil" McCarthyism!
(I stopped listening to Bill O'Reilly for about a year because of his swift boat ignorance, also.)