The GOP-E and Rand Paul are crying foul now on that issue and for good reason from their perspectives......
Many of the “Tea Party” groups targeted by the IRS were fronts for the GOP-E and Paulistas, not necessarily conservative grassroots citizens.
Incumbent politicians of both parties deal with their opponents using dirty tricks.
JFK’s political operative Kenneth O’Donnell was hatching an operation 50 years ago for the 1964 election that LBJ utilized.
It involved monitoring conservative radio shows that bought blocks of time on hundreds of radio stations across the country.
Any attacks on the president or his supporters would trigger equal free air time requests under FCC rules (Fairness) hindering the broadcasters by having the stations tell them to censor their words to avoid losing paid time to respond to “attacks” by the paid broadcasters.
The operation was carried out in 1964 but one radio station said NO triggering the Supreme Court’s Red Lion decision enshrining fairness regulation until a free speech ruling came down in the 1980’s.
“Tea party” is for small-government constitutionalism, which was a great umbrella for both conservative conservatives and libertarian conservatives.
I can assure you that if any GOPe front-group ‘tea parties’ were caught in the web, that was not what the IRS was intending.