(H/T: Instapundit) Annnnnnd here we go. Two meaty bits from a Fox News poll:
Translation: people don’t particularly believe that the Executive Branch didn’t know about the IRS targeting Tea Party groups all along.
Translation: people don’t particularly believe that the aforementioned targeting was due to rogue elements in the Cincinatti office, either.
And that’s pretty much what I wanted the American voting public to take away from this discussion: the (entirely justified, in my opinion) conclusion that the Executive Branch connived to attack its political enemies via use of the IRS. I didn’t actually need to directly link the scandal to Barack Obama himself: I honestly don’t think that he would have been dumb enough to give a traceable order, and if there was one, Obama would use the total resources of the US government to keep it from going public. All I needed was for the American voting public to decide that this administration was pretty much just like its predecessors; I figured that everything else would follow from that. And what do you know:
Looks like I was right.
Moe Lane
‘Pretty much just like its predecessors’ seems unfair to the predecessors. Unless you are doing something like comparing him to only Jeff Davis, Julius Caesar, and Alcibiades.
Unfair, JC and Alci B were at least competent
GJC III and A were charismatic untrustworthy backstabbers whose ambitions well exceeded their capabilities. There is some reason to see in them some of Obama’s methods and character. JFD probably also had better ability that BHO.
I seem to recall Jim Baen getting a beat-down from the IRS back in the Clinton era… for publishing Gingrich’s fiction.
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This ain’t nothin’ new.
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Mew
“All I needed was for the American voting public to decide that this administration was pretty much just like its predecessors . . . ”
“Pretty much the same”?
Bush created image problems as an avocation, spent money as if he were actually a left-of-the-middle-of-conservatism-Republican, did the “honorable thing” by unfailingly refusing to defend himself and his choices (as in, “an honorable Texan man doesn’t justify himself – his results do . . “), and just generally fostered an aura of . . . ineptity? Is that a word? It is now.
But the issues I had with Bush were disagreements on and disappointments with tactics and strategy, not ethics or morals.
I ended up quite favorably impressed with GW’s (yeah, I’ll say it) character. I also finally realized (explicitly, I mean – I think I always knew it but never acknowledged it) that we need someone of good character in that office much more than we need someone who’s smart or cunning or charismatic or hip or accentless. I think GW was very much one of the good guys, and I think he was ultimately directed by charitable impulses.
Not so much with B.O. I knew about his Chicago days because I was frequently riding the Blue Line to and from OHare while he was there. I groaned with dismay when I first heard his DNC speech that made him national, because I could see exactly how it would all go.
I knew that his political crowd was predominantly thuggish and rent-seeking and actively and automatically hateful of any opposition and they all knew and excelled in the tricks with which you can lie to everyone and become openly wealthy and turn every resulting accusation around into a sordid and racist moral failure on the part of your racist accuser . . .
I knew tons of money was always being found and redirected to him and his ilk so that they could solve his “community’s” issues, but the money would always go out in a flurry of speeches and his “community’s” issues never ever changed. He could have been a Daley. Actually, he was a better Daley than the last Daley, who in the end couldn’t stomach BO’s ways. When you’re too flagrantly thuggish for a Daley, you’re hitting new heights.
So, no, BO isn’t “pretty much like his predecessor”. That’s like saying that I don’t like pink wine, and I don’t like having lice, so pink wine is pretty much just like lice.
Actually, I’m very fond of GWB myself. But when you’re twisting a knife, you want to keep things nice and straightforward… 🙂
Well, I HAD paragraphs.
Blank lines get deleted, it seems.
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A lot of us use periods for spacing.
Don’t worry Moe. The IRS has AR-15s now to “protect” themselves.
There are times I wonder if this country will still exist when O’bama leaves office.