Margaret Chase Smith

On 1 June 1950, four months after Joseph McCarthy's Wheeling speech, Smith became the first Republican senator to condemn her fellow Republican on the Senate floor. Her "Declaration of Conscience", co-signed by six other Republicans, defended "the right to criticize, the right to hold unpopular beliefs, the right to protest" and warned against riding to victory on "fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear". She was also critical of the Truman administration in the same speech, which is the point: her objection was to the method, whoever used it. McCarthy retaliated, and it took four more years for the Senate to censure him.