Was Alger Hiss a Communist Spy? Don't Ask Former Hillary Press Sec Karen Finney

The left, speaking broadly, has a problem when it comes to Communism and the post-World War II period. They love accusing every single Republican of engaging in “McCarthyism” when it’s convenient to put Republicans on the defensive. But they abhor admitting that one of their own, State Department official Alger Hiss, was in fact a Communist spy. Admitting that would force them to admit that infiltration did happen, that for all his excesses McCarthy had a point, and that the Democratic Party has succored Communists over the decades. Every time a Robert Kennedy plays up to a Castro or Chavez type, another Democrat is sucking up to a Communist.

So, appearing on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show Monday, Karen Finney refused to answer a simple question: Was Alger Hiss a Communist spy? Finney’s name should be familiar, and not necessarily from her show on MSNBC — she was once Hillary Clinton’s press secretary and was once Director of Communications at the Democratic National Committee. Surely she knows the answer to the question: Was Alger Hiss a Communist spy?

Hewitt kicked off his interview with Finney by asking, “Did any communists infiltrate the United States government?”

“I think if we go back to the McCarthy hearings, it’s pretty clear that he created a culture of paranoia and fear that people later recognized, they sort of bought into it and then recognized that it was absolutely misplaced,” Finney told Hewitt. “That’s the point.”

“But Karen, did any communists infiltrate our government?” Hewitt asked.

Finney asked Hewitt to “go ahead and name them,” and Hewitt replied, “Can you? I’m trying to figure out if you know if any of them did.”

Finney likened his question to the same concept as “Michele Bachmann accusing my friend Huma Abedin of being in the Muslim Brotherhood because somebody she may have known, who may have known, may have known somebody.”

Hewitt, meanwhile, said the two statements weren’t at all alike, and it was “just a historical question” he was asking. The radio host then first posed the question he would repeatedly ask Finney during the five-minute interview.

“Was Alger Hiss a communist?” he asked.

Finney responded, “I understand where you’re going with this, and I get why you want to do this, but again, I think that’s distracting from the point I was trying to make.”

Hewitt kept trying to get an answer, and Finney kept refusing. Finney isn’t dumb, she’s just dishonest. She knew exactly where the discussion would go and refused to state a simple fact.

The kicker is that she brought the subject up, by smearing Texas Sen. Ted Cruz as a “McCarthyite.” She eventually hung up on Hewitt.

The schoolyard taunt “You can dish it out but you can’t take it” applies here. I think from now on, Republicans should follow Hewitt’s lead. Every time — every single time — any Democrat whips out the McCarthyism card, Republicans should just ask them “Was Alger Hiss a Communist spy?” That should Disrupt their smears.