The least surprising news of the week, except to those in the media who bought in to the months of Rightwing/Republican/Darrell Issa/GOP Victimization propaganda…
Those numbers, showing that progressive groups as well as “conservative” ones seeking tax-exempt status were given additional scrutiny by the IRS, are based on docs received via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests made by Think Progress.
We noted this very point in our initial coverage of the phony “IRS is targeting conservatives!!!” scam last year, just after the White House had (pathetically) fallen for it as well. (See here, then here, then here.)
While one might be excused for buying in to the scam in the first five minutes, 24 hours after it broke everyone should have known it was a scam. Nonetheless, the GOP, without having any legitimate basis for still being in business, has been making a career out of pretend scandals, including the one that “Obama is using the IRS to destroy Tea Party conservatives!!!” Their stupid base is dumb enough to believe them.
At this point, the Republican Party is no longer a political party. It’s a permanent campaign organization with little more than self-victimization as their central platform.
For the record, as we’ve discussed many times, the problem is not the IRS giving too much scrutiny to political groups (aligned with either party) masquerading as “social welfare organizations”, it’s the fact that they are allowing such groups to continue the masquerade, despite the very clear statutory prohibition on any political activity by such groups.
The power of rightwing media: they’re telling us the GOP is going to win the mid-term elections, yet you have another story saying the opposite. And then we have the media telling us IRS targeted rightwing groups, yet this shows the opposite. Where does this OPPOSITE always stem from and get into the mainstream? Rightwing media.