Wednesday on CNN’s “Wolf,” while discussing the Republican presidential debate last night, Democratic National Committee chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) suggested the participants’ policies would be something that would take us back to the “McCarthy era.”

Wasserman Schultz said, “You know, Wolf, what I was struck by last night was in thinking that if I had been watching and listening to this debate with my eyes closed, you would not have known that these were candidates for the president of the United States of America. It was more like a debate about the presidency of some authoritarian regime, because each and every one of the candidates has taken Donald Trump’s playbook and tried to make off with it, and do everything they can to emulate and worship his agenda and his proposals and make sure that they can earn the support of his supporters anticipating —probably incorrectly —that eventually he is going to nose-dive.”

She continued, “All of them virtually last night, no one carved out a significant difference of the president’s proposals and policies on how he is proposing to defeat ISIL. All of the candidates line up similarly. But the bottom line where our candidates differ is not suggesting that we ban all Muslims from entering the country like Donald Trump has said, and all of the Republican candidates still have pledged to support him if he is the nominee.”

She added, “Ben Carson, for example, does not seem to realize that where ISIL actually is, where the capital is, and that they are not out on the desert in an island somewhere alone and ready to be carpet bombed. Ted Cruz, the same thing. So I mean, you listen to all of those Republican candidates, and they doubled down on the extremism, on un-American policies that would take us back to the McCarthy era.”

She concluded, “The candidates are also out on the campaign trail making sure that we can spread our message, and draw the contrast between Democrats who want to help Americans build the cornerstones of American life, and the Republicans, all of whom want to take it away and take us back to policies that got us into the worst economic cries is since the great depression, and roll up the ability for anyone to come to the country. Shut the United States down as a refuge that we have been traditionally to people fleeing persecution. And the xenophobia and the un-American policies that have come out of the Republican field, I am sure will continue, and as a result in large part from their extremism, the Democratic nominee will eventually be the president of the United States.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN