It’s not Lerner’s first rodeo—or Obama’s
John Fund points out that Lois Lerner has a pre-IRS history of overseeing the same sort of abuses she supervised when she later came to the IRS:
Conservatives have long tangled with Lerner, who was director of enforcement at the Federal Election Commission from 1986 until 2001, when she moved to the IRS.
“Everything we have seen at the IRS was reeled out first at the FEC,” says Jim Bopp, a noted election-law attorney who represented the Christian Coalition in its successful fight to quash the FEC’s attempt to impose a $5 million fine on the group for political activities. The FEC lost the case on summary judgment in a 1999 opinion written by a Jimmy Carter”“appointed judge.
“In a dozen out of the 81 depositions in the case, the FEC wanted to know about people’s religious beliefs or the content of their prayers,” Bopp told me. “Lerner took the speech-chilling culture she developed at the FEC right over to the IRS.”
And you can be pretty sure that whoever gave her the job knew about her accomplishments, and that they were considered a feature, not a bug.
And Kimberly A. Strassel at the WSJ has been doing great work in connecting the dots and pointing out that, whether Obama directly ordered this or not, it’s been his m.o.—and that of the left—for a long time. And no secret at all.
This is the sort of thing that drives those on the right who’ve been paying attention crazy. The connection is obvious, or should be, to anyone with more than a glancing, MSM-limited, exposure to Obama’s history. He has not only been a beneficiary of the “if only Stalin knew” excuse while his underlings practice the Chicago way, he has called the behavior forth, winked at it, and chosen those who practice it to work for him. Whether his aides and lawyers “protected” him from the exact details of the IRS scandal or not (and it is not clear whether they did), there is no question that he generally knew and approved, and rhetorically supported, all the excesses therein and more.
From Strassels’ piece:
The [Bob Bauer, general counsel for Obama’s 2008 campaign, and then counsel for Obama’s White House] onslaught was a big part of a new liberal strategy to thwart the rise of conservative groups. In early August 2008, the New York Times trumpeted the creation of a left-wing group (a 501(c)4) called Accountable America. Founded by Obama supporter and liberal activist Tom Mattzie, the group””as the story explained””would start by sending “warning” letters to 10,000 GOP donors, “hoping to create a chilling effect that will dry up contributions.” The letters would alert “right-wing groups to a variety of potential dangers, including legal trouble, public exposure and watchdog groups digging through their lives.” As Mr. Mattzie told Mother Jones: “We’re going to put them at risk.”
The Bauer letters were the Obama campaign’s high-profile contribution to this effort””though earlier, in the spring of 2008, Mr. Bauer filed a complaint with the FEC against the American Leadership Project, a group backing Hillary Clinton in the primary. “There’s going to be a reckoning here,” he had warned publicly. “It’s going to be rough””it’s going to be rough on the officers, it’s going to be rough on the employees, it’s going to be rough on the donors. . . Whether it’s at the FEC or in a broader criminal inquiry, those donors will be asked questions.” The campaign similarly attacked a group supporting John Edwards.
American Leadership head (and Democrat) Jason Kinney would rail that Mr. Bauer had gone from “credible legal authority” to “political hatchet man”””but the damage was done. As Politico reported in August 2008, Mr. Bauer’s words had “the effect of scaring [Clinton and Edwards] donors and consultants,” even if they hadn’t yet “result[ed] in any prosecution.”
As general counsel to the Obama re-election campaign, Mr. Bauer used the same tactics on pro-Romney groups. The Obama campaign targeted private citizens who had donated to Romney groups. Democratic senators demanded that the IRS investigate these organizations.
Note two things. The first is that Bauer’s initial targets were Obama’s opponents in the Democratic Party, exactly what I pointed out in this essay as Obama’s longstanding pattern when he’s been in contested primaries. The second is that Bauer’s tactics could not possibly have been a secret, and that he has worked for Obama in high positions since at least 2008 and was an integral part of his re-election campaign in 2012. No accident, no “if only Stalin knew.” Just the clever appearance of it.
For anyone who continues to think Obama might not have known about Bauer’s tactics or approved of them, take a look at a post I wrote in August of 2008 about Bauer’s tactics on behalf of Obama. If I knew it and was writing about it way back then, it was not even close to being a secret. Not only can Obama not deny knowing what his minions were doing, he obviously approved and kept Bauer on, never speaking a word against him, and perpetuating a sort of good-cop bad-cop routine that continues to this day.
Of course, both of these articles were published in periodicals that are allied with the right (the National Review) and the pretty much right (the WSJ). Preaching to the choir? The other drawback is that people have to care. I’ve become convinced that most liberals and even many in the middle don’t get why these things are dangerous, even if done to the Big Bad (demonized) Tea Party. The left, of course, applauds them. They feel safe because, despite their accusations of high corruption against the right, they know it tends to be far more politically naive, less ruthless, and more concerned with means than they are. The left also thinks that these tactics, if they use them effectively enough, will help them achieve the permanent hegemony in politics they so desire.
“The left, of course, applauds them . . . also thinks that these tactics, if they use them effectively enough, will help them achieve the permanent hegemony in politics they so desire.”
Which applause brings Lerner and her ilk (Sandra Hall Ingram) and health care together to deny conservatives access to medical services.
You might say eugenics has advanced from prevention (hey let’s kill those black babies) to elimination (hey let’s kill Bush and then everybody cause we like to kill because we’re in the business of killing, oh the mike is on, oh, when I said kill, I really meant love.)
Sometimes I just marvel at the psychology of the leftists. I know several, of course, being in academia, and I’ve seen no sign that they really don’t believe all of the rank nonsense they spout about the right.
At the same time, as neo astutely notes, many of their more ruthless tactics don’t make much sense unless they know, deep down, that the right is “far more politically naive, less ruthless, and more concerned with means than they are.”
But then, if that’s the case, how could the right be so unholy in its vileness and villainy that such tactics are justified?
The more I consider it, the more it seems to me that the leftist simply does not live in a world with Others. He is a solipsist, the purest expression of the psychosis that extreme individualism can lead to (as Tocqueville saw so perspicaciously). And of course there’s a further irony there, in that the leftist is but a festering symptom of what he claims to despise with every twisted coil of his heart.
The collapse of the time-honored concepts of traditional ontology and metaphysics – God, teleology, form, nature – has ineluctable consequences for those who truly take the ruins as their faith. Nothing aims at anything intrinsically, there is no telos, no end, no nature, no independent order of things. Thought floats free and – innuendo intended – plays with itself. Emotions peel out of the guts like random lightning bolts from a dark cloud. This is considered a value: self-expression, autonomy, what Justice Kennedy described with consummate bathos in his “sweet mystery of life” opinion.
So, naturally, it makes no sense. They hate – period. They ruminate – period. They expect their unfocused, untethered derangements of the moment to automatically equate with solid reality. They believe that their passing fancies should move mountains and re-create a world destroyed by their own nihilistic beliefs – a better world this time.
They want to be god – to be a necessary, self-causing, self-explanatory being, pure actuality. To think is to create, to feel is to carve stone.
In sum, they do hate us, but that is transient. Once we are subdued or wiped out, they will seek for others to subdue or wipe out, and when there is no one left they will subdue and wipe out each other. Hatred and self-idolization is their secret.
P.S. – there is a shorter way to this conclusion. Assume (what is true) that the leftist’s bad faith leads him to project his primary qualities onto those he seeks to eliminate. For now, the targets are those on the right, for the most part. And the qualities projected onto the conservative are: pure hatred and absolute authoritarianism (self-idolization). Conclusion: The leftist’s primary qualities are pure hatred and self-idolization.
Quod erat demonstrandum.
Well done, Neo. This stuff is scary. My goodness. I guess it won’t matter to these people until they are up for the hip replacement surgery and all the other people who are better connected get the operation before they do.
Really, one has to fear speaking out on anything for what it could portend in the future. If the everyday man in the street doesn’t care about this soft tyranny at the IRS and all the rest, we really are in deep trouble. I was pretty bummed after the last election day. If the Left gets out of these scandals unscathed, the writing is on the wall.
Barry –
The writing is on the wall.
“. . . to feel is to carve stone.” That, that is good poetry. That right there stands with the great ones. I love it.
But “they ruminate?”
ru·mi·nate
Verb
1.Think deeply about something: “we sat ruminating on the nature of existence”.
2.(of a ruminant) Chew the cud.
I don’t think so. These unthinking animals have to be programmed to reach their hate. Nature and rumination do not produce animal; they produce human. Only evilly dominated humans produce animal.
Worse. Animals kill and eat for food and territory; they don’t subject their future generations to slavery.
The current chaos is proof of evil that is transcendent beyond man’s neurotransmitters.
I hunt, therefore I am.
I know. Quite depressing. Man, I used to be a huge lefty myself. Wore my anti Reagan buttons proudly. I keep hoping more and more people will have their “change” moments or events but I’m losing faith. I guess the indoctrination on me wasn’t so deep that it had convinced me that people on the right were actually evil.
Now, one is a “hater” or a “denier” if one thinks differently. Man, the brainwashing is so deep in so many I don’t know what could ever break it up. But, we knew this all along. If a relationship with Bill Ayers doesn’t move the needle on the radar nothing will. And that guy is in charge of helping to educate our kids nationally. Orwell!!
Actually, I should say,
I kill, therefore I am.
Don’t won’t to alienate the excellent hunters among us.
“He has not only been a beneficiary of the ‘if only Stalin knew’ excuse while his underlings practice the Chicago way . . . .”
and here I thought there was a law against the use of performance enhancing thugs,
“If a relationship with Bill Ayers doesn’t move the needle on the radar nothing will.”
Barry for the win. Precisely. That is why I never, never thought we were anything but underdogs in 2012. My guiding maxim was simple:
Any nation that is stupid enough to elect Obama once is stupid enough to elect him twice.
The unstated correlate (a kind of political Murphy’s Law):
Any nation that is stupid enough to elect Obama twice, will elect him twice.
” . . . and they didn’t even have to stand up and stop what was happening.” (Referring to RINOs)
http://realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/05/23/cruz_to_mccain_there_may_be_more_whacko_birds_in_the_senate_than_is_suspected.html
OMT –
Just by chance, on the theme of solipsism and the left, see this from Allahpundit:
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/05/24/good-news-from-the-new-yorker-unlike-bush-obamas-pretty-conflicted-about-all-the-people-hes-killing/
God help us.
No, really. Please. Help us.
You know, that piece of shit Obama must have looked at American politics like it was virgin territory. Cut down them huge trees, spoil those rivers, fill the air with clouds of smoke, and get the goods to the people.
All under protection of the fifth column otherwise known as your neighbor who voted for him. Well, get in their face, bring a gun to the next knife fight, and above all find a dead guy to vote.
Genuine liberals need to wake up and fight back against the Marxist parasites who have hijacked the liberal brand in America. They’re like the parasites that release chemicals that control the behavior of their hosts.
Too many liberals today only see through the tribal prism, Us versus Them. Left versus Right. Democrats versus Republicans. They don’t see merits or principles or ethics except first through the Us versus Them prism.
It’s scary and destructive.
kolnai,
Regarding the New Yorker piece, that points to why I strongly recommend the GOP and the right use a Bush v Obama frame that rehabilitates Bush’s legacy with a deliberate contrast to Obama’s shortcomings, failures, and trangressions in direct contrast.
The New Yorker’s reflexive anti-Bush fallback position highlights that the Democrats political advantage is not based on merit. Rather, it is based on their misinformation, propaganda, and false narrative that smeared the Bush administration and, at the same time, undermining our nation’s affairs as leader of the free world. And it worked for them two-fold. They’ve convinced people to fear, revile, and choose against the strawmanned GOP while diverting accountability from their own failings and trangressions.
If the GOP can directly counter the New Yorker pro-Dems frame by advancing the Obama v Bush frame, rehabilitate Bush’s legacy, and establish the simple theme that Bush was right and the Dems are wrong, they will pull the lynchpin of the Dems foundation, take the political high ground from the Dems, cast the Dems on the low ground, and go a long way to detoxifying and rebooting our political environment, and setting our nation’s affairs back on track.
Kolnai,
Until the 2008 election it wouldn’t have occurred to me that projection could exist on the national level, but everything the left ever accused President Bush of being and doing, the President they elected is and does. (Begin with empty suit, puppet, etc, etc.)
Michelle Malkin wrote a book about the Obama administration called, “CULTURE OF CORRUPTION.” She talked about the Chicago way and crony capitalism, but barely touched on this electioneering thuggery. The progs keep claiming about voter suppression from the Voter ID program. Hah, they really know how to suppress the vote.
Sending this one around. If only I had Instapundit’s reach.
“It’s not Lerner’s first rodeo….”
I am guessing you have been watching Kellie Pickler in Dancing with the Stars.