A conservative, he led the party's Old Right wing alongside Robert A. Taft in crusading against interventionism, communism, and the Progressive policies pursued by the Roosevelt and Truman administrations.

[1] His brother, Raleigh Valentine Reece, was a reporter for the Nashville Tennessean and the teacher who replaced John Thomas Scopes at Rhea County High School in Dayton, Tennessee following the infamous "Monkey Trial."

After graduating from Carson-Newman in 1914 as class valedictorian, he worked as a high school principal for one year, then enrolled in New York University, where he earned a master's degree in economics and finance in 1916.

According to a 1981 pamphlet by Stephen Alan Sampson of Anti-Communist Crusade, republished by Liberty University, Reece was a conservative derided by intraparty moderates as an "Old Guard reactionary".

During the campaign, Reece, who went to all counties in the district,[10] promised to serve only up to ten years, a vow he eventually broke.

[9] He also attacked the incumbent Sells, a lumber businessman, for alleged conflicts of interest in voting to "exempt excess profit taxes on corporations," furthermore stating:[9] Why don’t your congressman and mine in explaining how much he made in 1917 and 1918, tell our people how much he made in 1919, and why he voted to exempt these excess profits from taxes?Reece ultimately defeated Sells in an upset to win the GOP nomination and cruise to victory in the general election.

Once in office, Reece established services to help constituents with problems both large and small, a precedent continued by later elected Republicans from Eastern Tennessee.

[13][14][15][16] He lost in the 1930 midterms to Independent Republican Oscar Lovette[17] following backlash from constituents over the George W. Norris Muscle Shoals bill (the Senate version, which is considered a forerunner to the Tennessee Valley Authority) being vetoed by President Herbert Hoover as well as having failed to ensure the Cove Creek Dam being built.

[20] The incumbent congressman, who President Hoover offered to help in his sinking re-election bid, claimed that the Muscle Shoals bill introduced by Norris which emphasized a larger size and scope of the federal government "originated in Red Russia.

[21] During this period, although he was out of office during the time, his favorability among President Hoover ensured that patronage and significant influence went through his hands rather than Lovette's.

An investigation by a House subcommittee uncovered some "questionable" election procedures practices, though Reece was ultimately seated.

[24] However, the landslide defeats the GOP suffered nationally that year would mark the start of solid Democratic control in the federal government as the Great Depression continued.

Reece frequently voted against the majority of his fellow Republicans, many of whom disliked the very notion of the TVA, to support the Tennessee Valley Authority.

When asked why he didn’t go along with his party, Carroll Reece candidly replied no politician in Tennessee could survive politically by opposing the TVA.

An adamant conservative, Reece generally opposed the New Deal during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt along with Progressive initiatives such as Federal wage and price controls.

During the Cold War, Reece's statement that "The citizens of Danzig are German as they always had been" caused a reply from Jędrzej Giertych, a leading Polish emigrant in London and writer, publicist, and publisher of National Democratic background.

[citation needed] Cox suddenly died in December 1952, and the final report which was soon released cleared the investigated foundations of any wrongdoing.

Although I was unable to attend the full hearing I feel compelled to observe that, if a more comprehensive study is desired, the inquiry might be continued by the Eighty-third Congress with profit in view of the importance of the subject, the fact that tax-exempt funds in very large amounts are spent without public accountability or official supervision of any sort, and that, admittedly, considerable question able expenditures have been made.Among the remaining committee members, only Reece sought a do-over, believing that the scope of the investigations were insufficient.

He in addition stated in a long, detailed House speech: Some of these activities and some of these institutions support efforts to overthrow our Government and to undermine our American way of life.

... We respectfully suggest that the [Committee on Ways and Means] reexamine pertinent tax laws, to the end that they may be so drawn as to encourage the free-enterprise system with its rewards from which private individuals may make gifts to these meritorious institutions.

Reece would later declare that "The evidence that has been gathered by the staff pointed to one simple underlying situation, namely that the major foundations, by subsidizing collectivistic-minded educators, had financed a socialist trend in American government.