Deny. Delay. Destroy.

Posted on by

It was the Clinton playbook; the response to any PR threat to the President was a three-part cantrip:

  • Deny that there ever was a problem.  That was good enough for a lot of low-information voters.
  • Delay any reckoning.  If the Administration and its proxies in the media could create the sense that a story was “old news” and that we should “Mooooooove On”, it was a victory.
  • Destroy the messenger. 

The Obama Administration has polished the Clinton playbook to a fine sheen; in terms of teamwork in executing the three-part play, they’re like a NASCAR pit crew. 

Oh, yeah – they’re in the “Deny” and “Delay” phase with the IRS scandal.  And it’s working – at least among low-info Democrats, who are bleating “there’s no scandal” on cue. 

Lately, the party denial-and-delay line is “Hey!  The IRS targeted liberal groups, too!”

The line depends on the consumer being too dense to know the difference between “examine some…” partisan groups, and “targeting an entire movement”. 

Oh, yeah; it’s false:

The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration (TIGTA) sent a letter Wednesday to congressional Democrats telling them that while several liberal groups may have gotten extra scrutiny, the IRS didn’t necessarily target those — but it did do so for conservative groups.

“TIGTA concluded that inappropriate criteria were used to identify potential political cases for extra scrutiny — specifically, the criteria listed in our audit report. From our audit work, we did not find evidence that the criteria you identified, labeled “Progressives,” were used by the IRS to select potential political cases during the 2010 to 2012 timeframe we audited,” Inspector General J. Russell George said.

He said that while 30 percent of groups that had the word “progressive” in their name were given extra scrutiny, 100 percent of groups with “tea party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names were pulled out for strict scrutiny, which involved what the IRS since has said were invasive and inappropriate questions.

Democrats have argued that the IRS‘ scrutiny of applications for tax-exempt status hit both ideological sides equally, which would cut at the GOP’s argument that it was politically motivated. Instead, Democrats have said the scrutiny is the natural result of a jump in applications after campaign finance rules changed following the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case.

Read the whole thing.

And no; it’s not even close.

25 thoughts on “Deny. Delay. Destroy.”

  1. Ya got nothing,
    Again.

    This is all about the right wing groups violating the actual letter as well as the spirit of the law regarding these tax exemptions.

    It’s quite a lot like the uproar over the issue of terrorists on the right being a problem – they are, as much and more so than domestic islamo-terrorism.

    The notion that both right and left should be treated identically ignores the facts that sometimes one side is ore at fault than the other – as in the groups violating the law for tax exempt status.

    This was not the Clinton ‘playbook’; that’s your right wing wet dream. The right has been trying to manufacture scandals where none exist, or where the real problem has been conservatives.

    This is just one more big fat fail for the right.

    Ya got nuthin. Again.

  3. I can still recall Ted Koppel intoning (paraphrasing):

    “…these latest charges are the most explosive yet. Fully 60% of Americans think that if the Lewinsky rumors are true, that President Clinton should resign.”

    (Our next President)(paraphrasing again): “This is another hatchet job brought to us by the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy…”

    Ted Koppel (one year later and again paraphrasing): “Fully 60% of Americans think that a President’s private affairs should not affect how he does his job or whether he deserves to remain in office…”

    Dog gonnit…

    “The IRS targeted ‘Progressive’ groups…”

    Tea Party forever.

    “At first they arrested the Progressives, but I was not a Progressive so I…”

  5. At the end of the day you have one moderate scandal. And frankly the only thing they did wrong in the IRS case was to seek out conservative political groups rather than ALL political groups. Just one giant nothing-burger… The real story here is the failure of the media to provide any responsible journalism.

  6. Emery Doug, you get Nick Coleman over here to join you and Mongrel Cur and the three of you can have a daisy chain of stupid.

    I simply cannot wait until the next, inevitable sea change brings a solidly conservative administration and congress to power. The tear squirting and asshat dancing from all these “move along, now” lefties will be sweet succor.

  7. Try not to be such a tool Tom. Your predictions (including both amendments) for the previous MN elections weren’t all that fruitful either. But in your case, you raise guessing to an art form. :^)

  8. Ahh, so the left is planning a 1000 year Reich, Pffft. You really are an ignorant ass, Emery Doug.

  10. DG,

    I’m sorry to say, it’s gotten to the point where we have – to paraphrase Learned Foot – the “Dog Gone Anti-Lock Betting System”. Even if you know nothing about an issue, look at what DG says, and go the opposite way.

    This is all about the right wing groups violating the actual letter as well as the spirit of the law regarding these tax exemptions.

    Well, that’s the fever swamp’s current chanting point. But the disparity in the scrutiny, combined with the dearth of actual results saying anything was actually wrong, kinda trip you up.

    Just like every point you make, ever, in any forum, inevitably gets tripped up. By reality as it’s understood outside the fever swamp.

  11. It’s quite a lot like the uproar over the issue of terrorists on the right being a problem – they are, as much and more so than domestic islamo-terrorism.

    DG, I gotta say, it’s downright hilarious watching you fever swamp things visibly palpitating, hoping and praying that any incident of violence might, finally, be that phantom right-winger.

    Almost as funny as it is to watch the stories disappear once they get tied to Islam or the left.

    As they pretty much always do.

  12. The notion that both right and left should be treated identically ignores the facts that sometimes one side is ore at fault than the other – as in the groups violating the law for tax exempt status.

    OK.

    So what?

    This bears on the IRS’ biased conduct exactly how?

  13. This was not the Clinton ‘playbook’; that’s your right wing wet dream.

    Oh.

    I don’t think that term means what you think it means.

  14. It’s quite a lot like the uproar over the issue of terrorists on the right being a problem – they are, as much and more so than domestic islamo-terrorism.

    I suppose this is true if you believe that 48% of your fellow Americans are terrorists because they voted for Romney.

  15. The Koch Brothers gave money to a conservative outfit in Wisconsin that mailed out sample ballots in 2012. Dog Gone writing at Penigma finds private educational activity to be illegal voter suppression.

    The IRS withheld the ability to raise money from conservative outfits wanting to mail out sample ballots in 2012. Dog Gone finds government suppression of political opponants to be perfectly acceptable.

    The only sensible conclusion is that Dog Gone is a tyrant wanna-be. And Emery is her puppet.

  16. At the end of the day you have one moderate scandal. And frankly the only thing they did wrong in the IRS case was to seek out conservative political groups rather than ALL political groups. Just one giant nothing-burger… The real story here is the failure of the media to provide any responsible journalism.

    Moderate? You consider voter suppression and violation of 1st and 8th amendment rights as moderate? Why do you hate the Constitution and by extension USofA so much?

  17. DG,

    You said “This is all about the right wing groups violating the actual letter as well as the spirit of the law regarding these tax exemptions.

    …as in the groups violating the law for tax exempt status.”

    tell us, of the 259 conservative groups and 6 progressive groups targeted by the IRS (according to the IG report) how many were found to be breaking the law? Can’t find that number off the top of your head? That’s because you were LYING. You are a LIAR.

  19. Doggone, the trouble with your illogic is that the IRS knew nothing of what these groups were doing. They had no reason for “enhanced interrogation techniques”. Moreover, the numbers for likelihood: two sample proportion test, and Fisher’s exact test says that the likelihood of a coincidence is zero.

    Emery, nice try, but if it’s really not that big of a deal, why did Congress prepare impeachment papers for Nixon mentioning this very issue when Nixon did it? Sorry, but everything about this deal is a felony,and for good reason. Siccing the IRS on your political opponents basically makes the electoral process a joke, like in Chicago.

    Speaking of which, did you see the statistical test I presented above? Guess where that suggests the problem is?

  20. @ bubbasan
    I’ll be a bit more sympathetic towards your perspective, when I see criminal indictments for any “law breakers”. Until then, I’ll give Mr. Issa an A for showmanship

  21. Worse than Nixon. In Nixon’s case the IRS never actually did anything to Nixon’s enemies.
    Remember when the Left ridiculed Michelle Bachmann because she said the Census Bureau couldn’t be trusted with your ‘private’ information? She don’t look so paranoid now, does she?

  22. I’ll be a bit more sympathetic towards your perspective, when I see criminal indictments for any “law breakers”.

    Where have we heard that before? Not in relation to voter fraud in Minnesota which does not exist because nobody had been indicted? Mitch, are you sure you vetted DogPile and Emery are not the same person? Or does every libturd have their head so firmly planted in their posteriors they all sound alike?

  23. Emery; are you so dense that you don’t understand how Perjurer General Holder just might be preventing obvious felonies from being prosecuted?

  25. Case in point, Dana Milbank’s column in the Wapo:
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-darrell-issa-and-the-overblown-scandals/2013/06/28/a0b15884-e007-11e2-b2d4-ea6d8f477a01_story.html
    Milbank is yet another mainstream, ‘non-partisan’, and ‘unbiased’ journalist who went on to become an opinion-editorialists who backs the Left.
    Milbank’s take is that the scandals that have erupted around DC and the administration are all fabrications of Darrel Issa. This is a partisan Democrat’s take, it not a journalist’s take.
    To believe Milbank is to embrace the passive voice. Benghazi happened, Fast & Furious happened, Solyndra happened, the IRS scandal happened — but there was no agency. It’s almost a religious argument: something happened that required a cause, but there was no cause.
    This is what a failure of the fourth estate looks like:
    The White House deserves some of the blame for letting things get this far; a full release of information by the administration at the outset would have put the controversy to rest quickly.
    A journalist would have asked himself or herself, ‘Why was there no full release of information by the administration at the outset ‘?
    To Milbank, it’s just another thing that happened. What a crazy universe we live in! Things just sort of happen without reason or cause!
    The ultimate Dana Milbank column is the one where he wrote 800 words about Eric Cantor’s sneer:
    http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-07-12/opinions/35267406_1_eric-cantor-debt-limit-talks-tax-revenue

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.