At this point, you can’t help but give conservative groups credit for their dog-like tenacity in pursuing the specter of government corruption and scandal.
Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) is now the latest dog on this invisible hunt. The representative sent a letter to President Obama demanding the removal of IRS commissioner John Koskinen. Chaffetz even mentioned the possibility of impeaching Koskinen or voting to hold him in contempt of Congress.
And what is the grave and terrible crime which Koskinen has committed to merit such punishment? According to Chaffetz, Koskinen has obstructed House investigations into the IRS “scandal” and has failed “to preserve and produce up to 24,000 emails relevant to the investigation."
In short, this is yet another attempt by the Republicans to hammer away and find some nefarious conspiracy long after it has become useful or even politically expedient for them. And after years of nefarious conspiracies like the Birther nonsense and the complaints that Benghazi was some secret collaboration between Obama and Al-Qaeda, it is only reasonable that the Republican Party would refuse to let this conspiracy go.
Let us just make thing very plain. There is no IRS conspiracy. Conservatives claim that the IRS only investigated conservative banking organizations as some grand plan of harassment. But the reality is that liberal groups were investigated just as much as conservative groups. In fact, the IRS actually targeted progressive groups more than the Tea Party.
And even if the IRS actually targeted far right organizations more, that is perfectly reasonable. It is the right which fights taxes and is inherently hostile to the government. So it makes sense that the government will believe that groups which promote the concept that taxation is theft will not pay taxes and thus should be investigated more. The right is perfectly willing to do that by profiling minorities as “thugs” or “terrorists”, after all.
But that is not the only way which the GOP has promoted conspiracy theories against the IRS. There are of course those missing millions of e-mails. When it was reported that millions of e-mails went missing in the IRS through Lois Lerner and several others, Fox News instantly claimed conspiracy. The Obama administration and/or the IRS intentionally destroyed millions of e-mails rather than release them to the public, they claimed.
But the reality is that government e-mails and records have gone missing going back all the way to the Richard Nixon administration. There is a missing videotape from the George W. Bush administration recording Al-Qaeda suspect Jose Padilla’s final interrogation, and missing e-mails regarding convicted criminal Scooter Libby.
It appears when Republicans spend years denying the IRS the funds it needs to do its jobs, it turns out that it will not be able to fulfill some of its functions properly.
These facts will not keep Chaffetz from piping down, and it will not stop the Republicans from searching for some mythical scandal. But their continued devotion to finding such a thing should show the American public that the GOP is more interested in winning than in good governance.