Fresh and Alarming -- Revisiting the "IRS Scandal"

Credit Where Credit's Due

MeanMesa first heard this take on the "IRS Scandal" from Hall Sparks on the Stephanie Miller Show, June 19, 2013. [The Stephanie Miller Show, AM 1350, KABQ Albuquerque, 7 AM to 10 AM daily on weekdays]  MeanMesa has posted before on the cheap, puzzling elements of the artificial "scandal blitz" the GOPCons cooked up in their desperate hopes of future election victories. (Links to the MeanMesa "scandal posts:" Flaming, Red Hot Crisis at the GOP Scandal Factory Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.)

Naturally, any such tale stuck in the sleazy, synthetic PR world of Darrell Issa's Oversight Committee "hearings" must be told from the parts which are missing rather than from the parts that are present, but when just a few of those "missing parts" are laid out in the light, this one is fascinating.

What if -- instead of the Obama White House -- the evil doers behind the IRS's suspicious targeting of  tea bag 501C-4's were actually GOP Party operatives?

Immediately embracing the total validity of the old saying: "some old, something blue, something borrowed and something new," MeanMesa will quite happily "turn over the wheel" to an article by Mark Segal from Philly.com.  (Visit the site and read the whole thing here. All links in the original article are left enabled in this post.)

Are Karl Rove & GOP behind IRS scandal?

No, it's not from the "10 Most Wanted" poster (image source)

Mark Segal

Last updated: Monday, June 3, 2013, 11:40 AM
Posted: Tue Jun 18 00:01:00 PDT 2013

We know the Republican Congress is in a tizzy about the IRS looking into requests for IRS Tax exemptions for organizations named "Tea Party" and other conservative labels. They even had some hearings on them, attempting to tie the White House and President Obama to the scene. But as hard as they try, they simply cannot, since the White House had no knowledge of the incidents until told by the Inspector General. But wait. If President Obama, the White House and Democrats had nothing to do with something that seems so political, what about the Republicans?

Rather than the guessing game that the Republican Congress wants to play,let's take a look at the facts, firstly from the hearings themselves. Democrats were not allowed to have any information gathered by the committee's staff or the list of witnesses in advance. That is highly unusual in a Congressional hearing. Why all the Republican control? To further the point, last week an eye opening report revealed that Congressman Darrell Issa, the House Oversight Committee chairman who made all the charges against the White House, actually knew about the Inspector General's report before them, the people he was accusing. Remember that this is the same committee that falsified White House emails during the hearings on Benghazi.

Second, let's take a look at the questions asked during those hearings, specifically the questions that were not asked. While they searched for a White House link, the committee never asked about any connections to Republican operatives. Not one question. Why?

The man in charge of the IRS when this took place was a Bush appointee, Douglas Shulman, at the same time that Karl Rove worked in the White House and Dick Cheney was Vice President. These guys know a thing or two about appointments. And take note that several Liberal organizations and churches were targeted during those Bush days. Most famously All Saints Episcopal, in Pasadena, California. Their crime? A sermon about the ills of the Iraq war. A subject so close to the Bush administration's hearts that they sent an American hero, Colin Powell, to lie before the United Nations. So rather than the Obama administration contacting the IRS, it is more likely that a Republican like Rove would give orders to the man that he helped appoint. But still, why would they target their allies the Tea Party?

The formal Republican party was frustrated with the Tea Party, who won primaries with candidates like one who believed in "legitimate rape," but lost general elections along the way. Rove and his gang realized that as long as the right wing elements of the Tea party were around, they would not win the Senate, much less the White House. And it was Rove who was the most outspoken about the Tea Party at that time. Heck, that Tea Party made Romney, the candidate of choice for Rove, go so far right in order to win the primaries, he never really had a shot. On the flipside, Democrats loved the Tea Party, who campaigned against women, gays, and immigration. The Tea Party was helping the Democrats win elections, why would they want to stop them?

Step in Rove, a man who would step on your grandmother's grave to win an election. He knows all the IRS players, he helped appoint some of them in his days in Bush's White House. In fact, many in formal Republican circles did, too. Isn't it time to summon those phone and email logs from those Bush-era IRS appointees? Unless, of course, they have something to hide.

Mark Segal is one of Philadelphia's most awarded opinion writers and has been recognized by the National Newspaper Association, Pennsylvania News-media Association, Suburban Newspapers of America and the Society of Professional Journalists, among others. He can be reached on facebook or on twitter. 

Now, all these typically myopic, high level [Karl "Death to the Tea Bags!" Rove] Republican political machinations left poor, incompetent, House Oversight Committee Chairman, Darrel Issa, in way over his head.  Darrel must have been having wet dreams of the good old days when he was just a simple, hard working car thief.  Inundated by the necessity of building a case from all the chaotic, contradicting details, his soiled career as a professional GOP fact bender was already rapidly showing its age.

Good, Old Fashioned GOP "Up is Down"

And, of course, war is peace -- if you're a private contractor.

The notable thread which runs through this story is the amazingly arrogant willingness of the Republican-tea bag Party to stridently accuse their political opposition of precisely what they, themselves, have just been convicted. Granted, the owners of the Republican Party have long ago realized that their base of illiterate hill billies is totally unable to comprehend such obvious contradictions, but their eagerness to trot out the same insults for consumption by the larger base of voters is evidence of a "Hail Mary" panic.

Not even the permanently confused denizens of their savagely gerrymandered districts could be expected to find this stuff all that palatable.  While the Republican base is famous for its unusually stubborn invulnerability to nuance, the masses of more rational voters is not. 

Rove is no dummy.  The carefully crafted IRS scandal was a progeny of the think tanks simply performing as ordered by their check writing bosses.  After the scheme had flopped during the Romney catastrophe, Rove probably assuaged his wounds with a presumption that it was just too complicated to possibly cost the GOP any actual votes among its base.  His expected cover did, in fact, materialize, but only in a temporary way.

Someone else in the Party renown for its zombie-like unanimity in all things ideological must have picked up the possibility that Issa could embarrass the President with a half-baked, "patchwork investigation" and, from that realization, simply run with it.  The structural failure of the GOP to consolidate lies before going public is not particularly news worthy, but these gaffs generally occur between the classic old school oligarchs and the rambunctious, policy-free tea bags.

In this case, MeanMesa sees an unusual and refreshing departure from this GOP norm -- one creating an even more hysterical anomaly than usual.  For this "shoot out" both sides were comprised of servants to the constantly scheming oligarchs -- this time just servants from different GOP think tanks and perhaps different oligarchs.

MeanMesa has mentioned this in previous posts.  The Republicans are allergic to leadership because they think that everyone else in their Party is just like they are -- and they are generally right.  Naturally, in such a fear driven political culture this shattering lack of trust is predictable, but now it has obliterated every potential leader in the entire gang.  Not even their old favorite, mistake plagued Rush Limbaugh, has emerged with his "character" -- or his ratings -- in tact.

Historically, even after losing an election the rejected Republican candidate would have continued to be the face of the Party until someone with a brighter visage slaughtered his way to the top to replace him. However, after his drumming Mitt Romney has been officially vaporized from the political scene leaving in his absence the "empty chair" which made such a hit at the Convention.

The talk shows are not yet ready to resurrect George W. Bush, so they have settled for a thousand remakes of John McCain, the loser from just before the last loser and the loser after the last loser. This Rovian flummox was supposed to help, but the odor drifted into the nest before the egg hatched.