The GOP operatives are still hoping to use the IRS scandal:
"In a recent story, National Journal quotes a GOP strategist who declared that the scandal “will have staying power, and it will be used—and it should be—in political campaigns.” Likewise, there’s this from the National Republican Congressional Committee:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/07/05/even-without-evidence-of-a-scandal-republicans-press-on-with-irs-controversy/
I have my doubts it will have the 'legs' the NRCC hopes. On the substance of the scandal, the entire thing is unraveling. It's becoming undeniable that the actions of the IRS Ohio office had nothing to do with politics, much less was it influenced by the Obama White House.
Indeed, as the a NYT piece yesterday suggested, the actions by the IRS are a lot more 'complicated' than previously thought. What this means is that many others were asked similar questions as were directed at the Tea Party groups. Many of those who were questioned had notihng to do with political affiliation at all:
"Last month, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee released documents that revealed the IRS had looked for other terms besides "tea party" and "patriot" to subject certain groups for extra scrutiny. Those terms included terms like "progressive" as well as "occupied territories" and "open source software developers."
"In a recent story, National Journal quotes a GOP strategist who declared that the scandal “will have staying power, and it will be used—and it should be—in political campaigns.” Likewise, there’s this from the National Republican Congressional Committee:
“The scandal has legs,” said NRCC Communications Director Andrea Bozek. And with multiple investigations ongoing in the Congress, it has the “potential to make more news,” she said, and put more “smiles on Republican operatives’ faces.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/07/05/even-without-evidence-of-a-scandal-republicans-press-on-with-irs-controversy/
I have my doubts it will have the 'legs' the NRCC hopes. On the substance of the scandal, the entire thing is unraveling. It's becoming undeniable that the actions of the IRS Ohio office had nothing to do with politics, much less was it influenced by the Obama White House.
Indeed, as the a NYT piece yesterday suggested, the actions by the IRS are a lot more 'complicated' than previously thought. What this means is that many others were asked similar questions as were directed at the Tea Party groups. Many of those who were questioned had notihng to do with political affiliation at all:
"Last month, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee released documents that revealed the IRS had looked for other terms besides "tea party" and "patriot" to subject certain groups for extra scrutiny. Those terms included terms like "progressive" as well as "occupied territories" and "open source software developers."
"The picture that has emerged, the Times noted, is more complicated than the initial scandal seemed to indicate. "But a closer look at the I.R.S. operation suggests that the problem was less about ideology and more about how a process instructing reviewers to 'be on the lookout' for selected terms was applied to any group that mentioned certain words in its application," the Times reported.
As Greg Sargent points out many questioned were for reasons wholly unrelated to political ideology:
"Today’s story from the New York Times on IRS “filtering” should be the final word on whether this was political targeting or a more mundane instance of mistakes and misjudgments from overworked bureaucrats. Of the nearly 200,000 applications for tax-exempt status the IRS received between 2010 and 2012, it flagged 22,000 for further review. Of those, just 296 came from partisan political groups. In other words, notes the Times, “most of the applications pulled aside for further scrutiny in those years had nothing to do with politics, conservative or liberal, just as most of the red flags thrown up by the I.R.S.’s lookout lists were not overtly political."
So this should be the end of it. It's not hard to see now why Issa opposed the Democrats releasing the full IRS report-the whole scandal dissolves upon seeing it. Now as we can see from the quotes from the NRCC some GOP operatives will try to press on and insist that it's not over. At some point though it will get embarrassing. Like trying to beat the drum on Benghazi or Solyandra or something. If they try using it even then, more power to them-'them' being the Democrats of course.
We have Republicans admitting there's nothing political going on here too:
"A pair of Republican lawmakers told The New York Times in a story published Thursday that the Internal Revenue Service scandal that rocked the agency may not have been politically motivated as previously thought."
"The Times detailed how the agency's scrutiny of organizations that applied for tax-exempt status was more complicated than it originally seemed, building on previous reports showing that the IRS didn't just single out conservative and tea party groups."
"Rep. Charles Boustany Jr. (R-LA) said that Republicans still "haven't proved political motivation" behind the agency's scrutiny."
"Meanwhile, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) told the newspaper that, in hindsight, it seems unlikely that President Barack Obama used the IRS to go after his political enemies."
“Presidents have always been very careful about maintaining the appearance of keeping hands off the I.R.S.,” Blunt said. “I don’t have any reason to believe there wasn’t targeting of conservatives, but it might well have been a lot more than that as well.”
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