I think we've established that this is a legitimate story that deserves to be investigated. We already know that the IRS targeted conservative groups. The White House could be involved with this, but I doubt that they are because the IRS Commissioner was a Bush appointee. If Obama intended to target conservative groups unfairly, qit makes little to no sense to retain Bush's guy to run the IRS.
It makes perfect sense if Bush took the independence of the IRS seriously and thus didn't know or care what his politics were. The "it's Bush's guy" thing doesn't have the weight behind it that it does if we're talking about, say, a member of his Cabinet. The whole point of the position is that individual administrations don't have their "guys" in there.
It is entirely consistent with the facts that some low level official or officials in the Cincinnati office decided to target conservative groups.
Actually, it appears this may not be consistent with the facts, as I
pointed out earlier.
I really think that conservatives are making a huge mistake by blowing this out of proportion. What was done was bad. It doesn't need to be exaggerated for political purposes. The type of overreach that is going on, which is being driven by Republican officials and their interest groups, is counterproductive to finding out the truth and holding those accountable responsible because conservatives run the risk of being seen as motivated by politics and not a sincere desire to find out what happened. If they are seen by large swaths of the American people as being motivated by politics, then they will lose a lot of credibility if they ever do seek to bring evidence to light that this was a concerted effort on the part of the White House.
Yeah, the "Overreach" narrative is probably the most predictable part of every Democratic scandal. It comes right after Denial and It-Was-Isolated.
There's not much to say to this, except that the tendency to try to label something as overreach is always every bit as overtly political as the thing it's usually describing.
I also think it's worth pointing out that although what was done was inappropriate, the amount of harm done appears to be pretty small. There is as of now no credible evidence that conservative groups were denied 501c4 status on a political basis. The only evidence that has been presented is that they were asked more intrusive questions to justify receiving that status.
This isn't true, either; many organizations went years without those tax benefits. Some were still waiting for approval when they testified the other day! And many more simply stopped trying. So there's no serious question of tangible harm. And this is without getting into leaking a conservative group's information to a liberal group in direct opposition to them, which is mind-boggling and shows serious malice aforethought.
On a personal level, I would be shocked if President Obama had anything to do with this, not just because there's nothing in his background that suggests that he would do something like this
Sure there is. During the campaign, Obama's general counsel called for a targeted
investigation into a conservative ad group. He became the general counsel for the White House after the election. He ended up writing three letters in total to the Justice Dept. about it, even after they explained to him that no law had been violated. And it just kept going; more details at the link above. Really has to be read to be believed.
In 2010 Obama
accused the Chamber of Commerce--a group he's been at odds with, politically--of taking money from foreign corporations. I'll bet if I look more, I'll find more.
Not to mention talking very publicly and very often about how dangerous it was to have these groups spending money trying to influence the election.
but also because engaging in this type of behavior would be a huge threat to his Presidency, and President Obama is far too intelligent not to know that.
And you're far too intelligent to think this is a good defense. Bill Clinton was brilliant, and he did some pretty stupid things. Most Presidents do. The kind of things that get people in power in trouble tend to have to do with moral and character failings, not intellectual ones. It's usually hubris that does it, and the correlation between humility and intelligence is inverted.