Tommy Christopher of Mediaite had a rather much ado about nothing post on May 16 concerning Martin Bashir’s show, where he – and Joy Reid of the Grio – forced Republican strategist Ron Christie to admit that former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman was a Bush appointee.
While the outrage at the political targeting by the IRS is warranted, the strength of the “chilling” effect of it relies on a bit of a Catch-22, in that the delays arguably prevented them from affecting the outcome of the election, which they’re really not supposed to be doing anyway. The IRS wasn’t wrong for targeting political organizations, they were wrong for not targeting more political organizations.
“Joy, this is not about bureaucratic ineptitude,” Christie disagreed, “this is about a culture within the Obama administration…”
That’s where he ran into trouble. “Wait a minute, the IRS is not the Obama administration, Ron,” Reid shot back.
“That is a flat-out lie,” Christie replied. “The IRS commissioner is a political appointee by the president.”
What ensued then was several moments of Christie repeating that “The President of the United States appoints the IRS commissioner,” and Reid asking who had appointed the IRS commissioner who oversaw the “culture” that Christie decried.
Finally, Bashir stepped in. “Ron, I accept your assertion. Joy is asking you very politely to answer that question. Who appointed the head of the IRS?”
“Doug Shulman,” Reid helpfully added.
A stubborn Christie intoned “The IRS commissioner is appointed by the President of the United States.”
“Who appointed Mr. Shulman?” Bashir asked.
“Mr. Shulman was appointed in the previous administration,” Christie finally admitted.
What’e the point? Christopher concluded saying:
Christie continued to argue that the IRS is not independent, because the President was able to fire Miller (or to demand his resignation), but that’s the key difficulty that the President’s opponents will have with this scandal, going forward. In order to argue that the misconduct was the result of an administration culture, they have to pin this on George W. Bush, but the credit for fixing it will all go to President Obama.
Really? So, because this current administration is in the suck, the left has resorted to blaming Bush – again? That won’t spin this scandal away, and it’s nonsensical since this whole mess began in 2010. Liberals seem to have trouble digesting this: it happened under the Obama administration. Also, Obama’s White House Counsel knew about this last month, but that’s not all.
The DOJ took two months of phone records from the Associated Press. The EPA, which usually gives fee waivers to media and watchdog groups, cooperated with environmental groups, but denied conservative ones. We still have questions on Benghazi, and let’s not forget Fast and Furious. Is Bush to blame for all of these disasters? No. Obama’s second term agenda is on life support. It’s like whack-a-mole. You could try to discredit one scandal by blaming Bush, but this fact remains. These scandals are here to stay, and the president’s grossly overrated rhetorical skills won’t be able to save him. The American people’s patience wears thin quickly with scandal-ridden politicians.
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