CT Blue

The scandal de jour revolves around the fact that one office in the IRS, under a Bush appointed commissioner, used terms such as “tea party” and “9/12” to help pick and choose the 501©(4) applications to review. I don’t have much to add to what’s written here at the American Prospect. The real scandal, of course is that both parties (but of course, the Republicans more blatantly) have gotten away with abusing the 501©(4) designation, and the IRS has done nothing about it.

What these folks did might have been illegal, but then, what would our Republican friends be saying if the FBI, for example, failed to look into an organization that called itself the Muslim Brotherhood for the Promotion of Terrorist Activity in the United State? The fact is, the search terms they used were fairly accurate predictors for the type of organizations that abuse the law. Again, the mystery from my perspective is why they bothered, since the IRS has made no attempt to go after organizations like Crossroads.

One interesting aspect to all this is the extent to which the Republicans never learn. Sometimes, they can be more obtuse than Democrats. Karl Rove has hypocritically suggested that Bush would have been impeached had he ever dared do such a thing as Obama didn’t do; when in fact, he did do what Obama didn’t do, and remained, sadly, un-impeached. Obama might not want to go through it, but if I were the head of the DCCC, I might be looking forward to a repeat of 1998, when the Democrats made unexpected gains, helped in part by the disgust engendered in a substantial part of the electorate by what most considered an unjustifiable push toward impeachment. Compared to the “case” against Obama, that against Clinton was incredibly strong. Clinton did, in fact, arguably commit perjury. Obama happened to be president while an agency headed by a Bush appointee, with which he was not supposed to interfere, and with which he apparently did not interfere, engaged in questionable, if understandable, activities. If the Republicans impeach it’s a recipe for electoral disaster, particularly if the Democrats seize the moment and mount a coordinated counter attack. People want jobs, and they want Congress to do something about it. The Democrats may not be able to pass legislation, but they sure as heck can keep shouting about the fact that Republicans are wasting their time on trivia while people are suffering. Truman rode a “do-nothing Congress” to an against the odds victory. Despite the gerrymandering, the Democrats might be able to do the same if they could just get their act and voices together If they must pursue the IRS issue, and it’s worth a few hearings, the Democratic senators should be promising to find out why the people working for George Bush’s appointee did this sort of thing. But, alas, this is probably asking too much. For reasons unfathomable, Democrats are much more comfortable while in a defensive crouch.