What actually happened with the IRS: some employees began applying extra scrutiny to Tea Party applications for 501c4 status. 501c4 is tax-exempt status for political organizations that don’t actually support parties or candidates. There are much bigger (and transparently fraudulent) examples like Karl Rove’s GPS Crossroads, but these were smaller groups chasing that status. And the IRS apparently gave their applications more scrutiny and made them jump through a few more hoops. It seems unclear how high and wide the process went, but one thing is known: the IRS commissioner at the time was the holdover Bush appointee, who has since resigned. There is an acting commissioner, because the Obama appointee is lost among all the other unconfirmed cabinet positions.
There’s not a lot there. But what is there has given Conservative Inc. a gift on a silver platter. Martyrdom, conspiracy theory, wild outrage, and a hook for a limp-dick mainstream media to be pushed into supporting the whole thing. It’s Whitewater all over again – just start the ball rolling, throw everything else you can into it, and maybe you’ll turn up something. I’m going on the record right now: there WILL be an attempt to impeach Obama ahead of the 2016 elections unless the Democrats somehow regain control of the House in 2014 and the GOP can’t slide it in by then.
Meanwhile, the Senate is still ground to a halt and tons of appointed positions sit empty, because the GOP has normalized an unconstitutional 60-vote requirement to pass anything. Government is failing to work, simply because the Republican Party has figured out how to get away with preventing it working and blaming Obama for the resulting mess. This is your new political normal. The American political system is broken, the Republicans broke it, and we sat by and let them do it.
There’s not a solution. The obvious thing to do would be to fix the filibuster unilaterally, but that won’t happen because 1) Harry Reid is an amoeba, not a man, and lacks the most fundamental spinal fortitude to stand up for his party and his country, and 2) a unilateral breaking of the filibuster would bring on the Mormon Tabernacle Choir of teabaggers and their amen corner in the Village of Washington screaming about executive overreach on the Sunday talk shows and impending tyranny on the talk radio. And that’s the easy solution – when the easy fix is impossible, you just have to accept that it’s not getting fixed. You just have to start looking for the least painful fail case.