Yesterday on Morning Mika, er Morning Joe, Donny Douche Deutsch revealed the new liberal argument regarding the trifecta of scandals plaguing the Obama regime. The first part was Deutsch using the targeting of Tea Party groups to hammer Tea Party groups:
That’s when Deutsch used the story of the IRS demonizing tea party groups to further demonize tea party groups.
Basically what it is going to do, it’s going to force, in the primaries, to galvanize the Tea Party. You’re going to get more extremist candidates. They’ll lose in general election. Come general election time, if somebody voted against background checks for guns, if somebody is still doing the crazy, crazy, crazy social issues, I disagree with you.
Deutsch continued to make his case and wrote the IRS scandal off on “a few idiots” operating on their own. Even at a time when the White House is under pressure from three growing scandals–Benghazi, AP and IRS, we can still count on MSNBC to make the “crazy, extreme” tea partiers the real story.
But then he went on on how to sell the scandal package to America.
“I want to say something and pick up a little on Mike’s point. Stop selling evil and sell incompetence. It is very simple. These aren’t evil people. They’re incompetent. They’re over their head. Benghazi, AP, IRS, wrap it up in a red bow and say they have fallen and they can’t get up instead of painting the devil. The American people can accept that argument.”
Got it? They’re not evil, they’re stupid and incompetent.
The Obama State Run Media is now in full Obama Recovery Mode implementing that strategy.
Piers Morgan invited Jay Carney to disabuse America of the notion that there even are any scandals:
Carney’s answers summed up: There are no scandals.
“You’re concocting scandals that don’t exist,” Carney said, when show host Piers Morgan asked how the Obama administration would “restore the faith that some Americans have lost” in its transparency.
“Especially with regard to the Benghazi affair that was contrived by Republicans and, I think, has fallen apart largely this week,” Carney said.
Ezra Klein takes notes from Deutsch:
On Tuesday, it looked like we had three possible political scandals brewing. Two days later, with much more evidence available, it doesn’t look like any of them will pan out. There’ll be more hearings, and more bad press for the Obama administration, and more demands for documents. But — and this is a key qualification — absent more revelations, the scandals that could reach high don’t seem to include any real wrongdoing, whereas the ones that include real wrongdoing don’t reach high enough.
There was no early connection between Nixon and Watergate either, and Klein is anxious to suffocate this baby in its crib before its lungs fully expand.
Two of the idiots at Politico could no longer resist dragging Bush into this:
It took him a day or two to get started, but President Barack Obama this week signaled that he is going to follow the conventional Washington playbook for trying to tamp down scandal.
He has furrowed his brow, sacked an agency head, pledged transparency and cooperation with official inquiries and piously declared that no one is more troubled than him about any wrongdoing.
There’s no indication that Obama and his aides have paused to ponder the WWCD test: What Would Cheney Do?
Meanwhile, the IRS official running the “Tea Party Targeting” division of the IRS will be in charge of enforcing Obamacare:
The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.
Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.
This person has been awarded bonuses which grew as she targeted more and more conservative groups:
Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS executive in charge of the tax exempt division in 2010 when it began targeting conservative Tea Party, evangelical and pro-Israel groups for harrassment, got more than $100,000 in bonuses between 2009 and 2012.
More recently, Ingram was promoted to serve as director of the tax agency’s Obamacare program office, a position that put her in charge of the vast expansion of the IRS’ regulatory power and staffing in connection with federal health care, ABC reported earlier today.
Ingram received a $7,000 bonus in 2009, according to data obtained by The Washington Examiner from the IRS, then a $34,440 bonus in 2010, $35,400 in 2011 and $26,550 last year, for a total of $103,390. Her annual salary went from $172,500 to $177,000 during the same period.
The IRS is going to be the muscle for Obamacare. Either way – evil or stupid- they’ve demonstrated themselves to be politically motivated and that’s dangerous. Byron York highlighted some of the possibilities:
The IRS will also decide who is, and who is not, eligible for Obamacare’s subsidies. The law authorizes the IRS to share confidential taxpayer information with the Department of Health and Human Services for the purpose of determining those subsidies. And since subsidies don’t just apply to a relatively small number of the nation’s poorest citizens — under the law, they can go to a family of four with a household income of nearly $90,000 — they will affect a huge segment of the population.
In addition, the IRS will keep track of even the smallest changes in Americans’ financial condition. Did you get a raise recently? You’ll need to notify the IRS; it might affect your subsidy status. Have your hours been reduced at work? Notify the IRS. Change jobs? Same.
Last August, IRS official Nina Olson testified before Congress on the changes Obamacare will bring to Americans’ dealings with the nation’s tax collector. “Do you believe that most Americans are going to update the IRS or state exchanges when they change jobs, get married, move states, whatever?” Michigan Republican Rep. Tim Walberg asked Olson.
The left’s desire to snuff these scandals early without a decent vetting makes all the more clear that such investigations are not only warranted, they are an absolute necessity.
ADDEND
I am not sure anyone should be comforted by the President, the Attorney General and the IRS being incompetent.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.