Posted on 06/21/2013 12:29:15 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Mitch McConnell delivered a speech today at the American Enterprise Institute to officially signal that the IRS scandal has entered its post-fact phase. When the IRS first revealed that its Cincinnati office had attempted to enforce its nonprofit laws using a search function that disproportionately impacted conservatives, Republicans were certain it must have come from the White House. They were going to follow the facts. But all of the facts point in the same direction, which is that the Obama administration had nothing to do with it at all. That was the conclusion of the agency’s inspector-general report, as well as the House Oversight Committee’s own interviews, which the Republican majority tried to suppress and which (when the Democrats released them) showed the operation was an independent, well-intentioned effort to enforce the law led by an IRS official who happens to be a conservative Republican.
McConnell’s speech is an attempt to reframe the issue in a way that it can survive the utter absence of incriminating facts. One method he employs is to flip around the burden of proof: Now we have an administration that’s desperately trying to prove that nobody at the top was involved in any of this stuff, even as they hope that the media loses interest in this scandal and moves on …
Got that? Before Republicans were going to prove that Obama’s administration was involved. All of the evidence suggests it wasn’t. So now McConnell is framing the question as Obama trying to prove he wasn’t involved. Which, of course, he can’t. For that matter, McConnell can’t prove that he didn’t mastermind the IRS. You can’t prove a negative.
McConnell also argues that the scandal is larger than facts about illegality or misconduct — “what we’re dealing with here is larger than the actions of one agency or any group of employees.” By "larger," McConnell means the scandal is just the same nebulous suspicions they have always had about Democrats running the government: The attacks on speech that we’ve seen over the past several years were never limited to a few Left-wing pressure groups or the DISCLOSE Act. They extend throughout the federal government, to places like the FEC, the FCC, HHS, the SEC, and as all Americans now know — even to the IRS. These assaults have often been aided and abetted by the administration’s allies in Congress.
The “Disclose Act” is a proposed measure that would require unregulated political groups to publicly disclose their donors. Back when campaign finance reformers were trying to actually put limits on outside donations, McConnell was a fierce advocate of this idea. Since the Supreme Court killed spending limits, disclosure has become the best reformers can hope for, and McConnell has now turned against it and indeed portrays it as a sinister Nixonian attempt to suppress free speech.
The belligerent and borderline-paranoid tone of McConnell’s speech today is a kind of covered retreat, signaling the IRS scandal’s turn into a vague trope that conservatives use with other members of the tribe, the way liberals liked to say “Halliburton” during the Bush years, to signal some dark beliefs they don’t need to back up.
Nick. Don’t get carried away, huh. Who gives a rats rear end about how your WARPED LEFTIST MIND interprets McConnell’s speech. You SOCIALIST FRAUDS have no credibility at all. THE FOREIGNER and no one else is the main guy behind all these scandals. IRS, BENGHAZI, FAST and FURIOUS, VOTER FRAUD, ELIGIBILITY FRAUD. NSA, WALPER, to name a few.
Telling you what they do doesn't defend them ~ rather it tells you where the CRIME IS.
RINOs, as you know all too well, don't tell you what these people do ~ they tut-tut and hope you go away.
The issue addressed in that particular thread however wasn't big versus small government but somebody said they were beyond the stage where facts are discovered ~ and, possibly I wasn't clear enough on that score. The truth is that WE ARE NOT BEYOND determining the facts. The new IRS commissioner continues to lie and Mitch McConnell continues to repeat those lies. I don't buy their lies. Maybe some do, but I don't.
That's like referring to a Captain as 'General' ~ seriously. At that level you might come up with a novel question every now and then but your purpose is to work to the numbers ~ maintain productivity, maintain security, keep workhours down.... As Jim noted, the three year delay is a serious matter, and my experience in a counterpart agency says 3 years is a heck of a lot longer than half an hour ~ which is what it would take us to handle any of those applications.
Not only that, but considering what I've read about the person, calling him a "conservative Republican" is even more inflated.
always had a hunch that the Republicans knew about it and agreed with it....
"GOING to become"????
Well this was the first time it was brought to light and there was some genuine outrage about it.
Now it will become like the perennial allegations of voter fraud that never gets investigated.
Everyone will know its happening, and everyone in power will turn their head and pretend it isn't
The top dog to the whole event was Lois Lerner ~ she was the Obots trusted agent at IRS who could be given a spoken directive and she'd carry it out.
ALL THAT IS NEEDED is to interrogate all her subordinates AND the lawyers in IRS general counsel who advise her regarding her management areas.
Note the hundreds of times the Commissioner and his chief lackey visited the WH ~ what that means is they were meeting with someone there every third day to relay messages back to the internal bureaucracy at IRS ~ which would include Lois Lerner. That way Treasury Department's investigators would not find her on a phone talking to her confidants at the WH about what she should do.
Goes on in Gub'mnt all the time.
How many Easter egg rolls DID the IRS attend at the White Hut???
Since the days when Clinton purged the entire force of Federal prosecutors, I've entertained no illusions.
Still, they usually can all the prosecutors ~ that’s considered an entry level job into political life ~ and it wasn’t an issue until ‘W” canned his own people ~ well, a bunch of them except for the zombie who prosecuted Campeon and Ramos. He got to hang around. That’s when I knew “W” was having mini-strokes!
Either the Republicans are completely incompetent, or they are in bed with the Democrats.
Either way, I want nothing to do with them.
The republican party leadership is in BED with the fascist democrats. I do not understand why so many people are blind to this simple truth.
“Any man who must say ‘I am the King’ is no true king.”
It’s not over because the apologists stamp their feet and claim it’s over.
It’s over when no one feels any need to falsely make that claim.
Hell, the next REPUBLICAN administration, if there is one, will be a Bush or a bobdole -different grades of the same thing- and the IRS will get more invasive than even the Democrats got. And while a couple of high profile privacy abuses will be directed against Democrat donors, the great bulk of them will still be directed to the right.
there is NO republican leadership,
just a couple of hacks
Another liberal rag. McConnell is a squish though. He has to be replaced, and not by Cornyn or any of the other doofus squadsters.
The Republicans are missing the point the Democrats made in blaming Bush for Abu Ghraib - where here it’s really true. Obama did create an atmosphere where the ends justifies the mean, where “enemies” needed to be punished, and based on IRS bonuses, it sure appears there were rewards for getting the job done - whether or not a direct order or link can be found.
I’m guessin’ you weren’t around during the Nixon years or the Clinton years either.
send the gobbler off for reconstructive surgery.... nitwit!
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