Scandalmongering and Unfair Comparisons

For the better part of this week, we have been seeing a lot of news coverage over the scandal at the IRS. It seems that applications for 501(c)4 status from conservative groups received more scrutiny than similar applications from liberal groups. Not very good news for a government agency that is already distrusted by a wide array of Americans.

After a week of twenty-four hour news reporting on the scandal and additional information coming to light, no evidence has shown that President Obama had any involvement with the IRS' greater scrutiny of conservative groups. That has not stopped the most rabid right-wingers, however, from making unfair and overwrought comparisons to Nixon.

    
Now we get this era's version of Mr. Nixon's infamous Enemies List, too: The director of the division of the IRS that oversees tax-exempt organizations apologized last week for targeting those that have suspicious words like Tea Party or Patriot in their names.

To quote Director Lois Lerner: "We made some mistakes; some people didn't use good judgment. For that we're apologetic." Right. Just some mistakes. Or as Ronald Reagan would say, slipping into the passive voice for once, Mistakes Were Made.

Surely it was only a coincidence that the IRS didn't target organizations with words like Progressive or Ninety-Nine Percent in their names. Just as the Enemies List compiled by Richard Nixon included only left-wing types -- or those he thought were left-wing in his all-consuming paranoia. These days it's a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, to use Hillary Clinton's term, that draws special attention from the IRS.

http://townhall.com/columnists/paulgreenberg/2013/05/16/deja-vu-all-over-again-n1597426

So said conservative columnist Paul Greenberg earlier this week. Naysaying political cartoonist and cheap shot artist Bob Gorrell also joined in on the act this week:

Leaving aside the fact that liberal groups were scrutinized in much the same way as conservative groups (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-15/irs-sent-same-letter-to-democrats-that-fed-tea-party-row.html), it's really reaching to claim that the current IRS scandal is "Nixonian".

Let's recall our history. While he was in office during the early 1970s, Richard Nixon compiled enemies lists and used the IRS as a weapon against those enemies. It was revealed during the 'Watergate' scandal that Nixon had personally asked the IRS commissioner to go after his political rivals through their taxes.

Is there any proof that President Obama has ever compiled an enemies list of his own? No.

Is there any proof that President Obama tried to go after Tea Party groups via the IRS? No.

So where, one may ask, are the parallels to Nixon - besides the fevered imaginations of Greenberg and Gorrell?

All the evidence released thus far points to the IRS scandal being an intra-agency problem. The Citizens United ruling in 2010 opened the floodgates, allowing political advocacy groups to avoid paying taxes by claiming that they were "social welfare" organizations. Apparently, IRS bureaucrats were so confused by the onslaught of new 501(c)4 applications that they began scrutinizing the groups who were asking for tax-exempt status, thus creating the scandal in the first place.

It's bad enough to find out that the IRS was targeting certain groups because of their politics. Partisan vultures eager to play the politics of scandal don't help matters. Is it too much to ask to wait until the whole truth is revealed before asserting, without proof, that Obama is guilty of Nixonian crimes?