Honestly, I don’t even know where we go from here.
The IRS and several other executive branch agencies came down on True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht like the proverbial ton of bricks after she founded her organization. The agency delayed her tax-exempt application for years. There is no debate that the IRS targeted her and many other Americans, and that the targeting was political. The Daily Caller even has emails suggesting who within the White House may have been responsible. It’s no one most of us have ever heard of, one of President Obama’s direct assistants. So, close enough to the president to start asking what he knew and when he knew it.
But none of that has gotten past the cute ears of one Alex Wagner. She believes that targeting did happen. She just has a novel theory on who targeted whom.
“There is a controversy here,” Wagner conceded. She said, however, that the true controversy in the IRS scandal involves the influence of outside money.
After detailing some of the revelations released this week involving how the IRS tried to draft a letter denying Karl Rove‘s Crossroads GPS its tax-exempt status was agonized over, Wagner said it was striking how little oversight there was of the new post-Citizens United rules.
“In my mind, the IRS, who was trying to get this out, they were the ones that have been actually targeted in this whole investigation,” Wagner asserted.
Like I said, I don’t know where we go from here.
The targeting happened. Emails released yesterday show that Rep. Elijah Cummings was involved. He was involved at the same time he was supposedly investigating the abuse. With the Daily Caller’s story added, the scandal looks more and more like it touches many major Democrat figures and goes to the White House. Jeanne Lambrew, the person highlighted by the DC, works directly for President Obama. She’s one of his major assistants. Previous disclosures have suggested involvement by other Obama appointees.
So where do we go if that’s the case? I don’t recall a party-wide scandal of this importance in American history up to now.
It’s a given that Obama and Holder will never ever ever appoint a special counsel to investigate. Ever. They are beyond ordinary political pressure. They have no respect for the rule of law. They do not respond to public opinion. They will always have the likes of Alex Wagner to carry their ever more preposterous defenses.
With no special counsel, that leaves Congress to appoint a select committee in one or both houses. That will not happen in the Senate before the mid-terms. It could happen in the House, but such a committee will necessarily have Democrats on it. Cummings’ emails show the fatal problem there — he already abused his position on the Oversight Committee to thwart the investigation, of which he now ought to be a target. If he becomes a target, he will play the race card, Holder and Obama will play the race card, and most of the media will play the race card too. What, you think Chris Matthews, Dana Milbank, ABCNBCCBS and the rest of them are above dropping the race card?
Besides, how do we know which Democrats weren’t involved? Most of them had the motivation, they had the hatred of the Tea Party and the lesson of 2010, and they harbored the hatred of the Citizens United decision that apparently animated Democrats to take action, from Obama on down. Show me the Democrat who would have had a moral or ethical problem with using the IRS as a weapon to suppress dissent. Does such a Democrat roam the halls of Congress? Even one?
Join the conversation as a VIP Member