I have been hearing about this, and have pondered as well, what the targeting and holding up Tea Party and 9/12 groups for their 501(c4) status had on the 2012 election. This not just for Romney, but possibly legislative gains.
I bring this up because after the elections of 2010, the Tea Party seemed to have gone away, almost silent, yet they were one of the key groups to do the Republican sweep, particularly in the House of Representatives. As it has come out in the past few days, the IRS began their targeting right after the 2010 mid-terms.
This raises a large question; a hypothetical one that is growing to be very plausible, but this also goes into the “what-if” side of history:
Did the suppression of the Tea Party groups for tax exempt status hurt Romney and conservative gains in the 2012 election? Did this suppression also hurt a Republican Primary challenger’s bid for the general Presidential election, ushering in a weak candidate that led many conservative voters home on election night? Did the targeting of Tea Party tax exemptions decrease the pool of local and regional Tea Party groups that ultimately limited their voice of influence that was very prominent during the 2010 mid-terms?
And would the lack of the cover up by those in the administration and the press have persuaded many voters that were independent and voted for Obama, or persuaded those who stayed home to go and vote to stop corruption? Or would have Santa Clause still won out?
I would think it would hurt more now going forward since now that it’s in the public domain everyone knows about it and most wealthy donors are going to be really tentative about getting involved for fear of attracting unwarranted scrutiny.
I figure it would be the opposite as many would push harder to put in candidates that would push laws to stop this, and prosecute those who have. This should be hurting the Democrats pursuit of more government power and their political ambitions for the real foreseeable future.
The Young Republic almost went to Civil War because of the abuse of government power after the passage of the Alien Sedition Act and the government abuse that went with it against political opposition.
The major difference is is that there was no law telling the government they could do what the IRS did, and furthermore, it was illegal to use government position (at least I hope so) to fulfill a political agenda via subjecting your opposition with heavy government suppression.
The one thing that Obama may have going for him is what President John Adams had (though he still lost the election of 1800 over it), is that some of Obama’s advisers may have orchestrated this behind his back (using his enemies list to do so), or these top IRS officials did take it upon themselves. Adams was not very inclined to really enforce the A&S act, but Hamilton (leader of the ultra federalist and cabinet member of the Adam’s administration) did.
That’s a possibility but considering how POTUS likes to have his hand in everything I doubt. If anything I could being a situation where he just tells his advisers GO do something to make something happen and don’t tell me about it. He’s still complicit in it.
Obama is at the least, circumstantially implicated at this early stage, he met with the ideologically driven IRS union president the day before IRS began its pogom. These are historical facts…
In short: the very day after the president of the quite publicly anti-Tea Party labor union — the union for IRS employees — met with President Obama, the manager of the IRS “Determinations Unit Program agreed” to open a “Sensitive Case report on the Tea party cases.” As stated by the IG report.
The NTEU is the 150,000 member union that represents IRS employees along with 30 other separate government agencies. Kelley herself is a 14-year IRS veteran agent. The union’s PAC endorsed President Obama in both 2008 and 2012, and gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles to anti-Tea Party candidates.
Putting IRS employees in the position of actively financing anti-Tea Party candidates themselves, while in their official positions in the IRS blocking, auditing, or intimidating Tea Party and conservative groups around the country.
The American Center for Law and Justice, headed by chief counsel Jay Sekulow, plans to file suit in federal court in the coming weeks on behalf of more than two dozen conservative groups that claim their harassment at the hands of the nation’s tax authority continued long past the White House’s purported end date — and, for a number of them, continues still. Of the 27 organizations the ACLJ has represented to date, ten still have not received approval, two years after applying. Two others gave up.
Its systemic, and it is obvious that its coordinated…
What gets me is that these people aren’t even good at hiding their actions. I mean what happened to the days of handwritten notes that were burned immediately upon consuming their contents? Their not even good at being corrupt it seems. lol
They don’t have to be, they don’t care…Obombo operates on the theory of, Want me to stop doing something? Make me…people who think like this will never stop, not until their hands are placed behind their back and the handcuffs put on…
I would imagine that with the vast bulk of the print/electronic media not just supportive of your ideology, but actively participating in covering its tracks, it would be somewhat easy to conclude yourself untouchable…That’s how things went behind the iron curtain, and that is exactly what the national democratic socialists are modeling themselves after…
