A Letter To The Editor

A Letter To The Editor that I submitted to the Richmond Times-Dispatch was published today! Frequent readers of this blog will likely not be surprised by the content:


Washington is caught up in Scandalmania 2013, and so, it seems, is the letters section of this newspaper. Since news of the IRS scrutinizing conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status and the Benghazi attacks, there has been a flurry of letters from conservative correspondents breathlessly accusing President Obama of corruption and claiming that he is the second coming of Richard Nixon

As more facts have been released to the general public, however, Benghazi and the IRS controversy have begun to look less like scandals and more like molehills.

Take Benghazi. Emails released from the White House reveal that it was the intelligence community – not the White House – that was responsible for the infamous talking points from which Susan Rice read on Meet the Press. Besides Rice, Obama is also absolved from guilt, as military analysts have gone on record to say that even if military planes had been sent to Benghazi during the attacks, they would not have arrived in time to render aid. So much for Benghazi being used to derail Obama’s presidency.

Attempts to turn the IRS controversy have met with similar difficulties. Despite claims to the contrary, liberal groups received the same scrutiny as conservative groups, suggesting that the IRS was not targeting political opponents to the president but simply doing what it thought was its job. A conservative-leaning manager of the IRS recently told The Washington Post that he was responsible for the scrutiny of political groups and not the White House.

There are certainly valid reasons to be upset with Obama. Recent leaks revealing that the government has been spying on citizens’ phone records is appalling. If the president is to be criticized, however, he should be criticized for what he has done, and not imaginary scandals milked by the opposing party. What happened to Republicans vowing to focus on jobs, jobs, jobs?

A Swing and a Miss

Ever since the news broke that conservative groups had been scrutinized by the IRS, the GOP has been desperate to milk as much political capital out of the story as possible.

Too bad that, as I've noted here, the facts of the case have revealed little to nothing scandalous that could be used against Obama. As the president himself noted, albeit commenting on another scandal, "there's no there there".

But now conservatives are excited because, in their minds, they've found the so-called smoking gun that "proves" Obama's complicity in the IRS "scandal": the fact that the former IRS commissioner - gasp! - visited the White House!

Unfortunately for the scandal-mongers, the commissioner visited the White House eleven out of one hundred seventy -five times - mostly for meetings on how to best implement health reform:

Source

As a good friend of mine often says: a swing and a miss. So much for Scandalmania 2013!

And as for "the smoking gun", do Republicans really want to bring that particular metaphor to mind? Have we forgotten the last time that metaphor was used by the GOP?

"Smoking Gun"