If you’ve got the IRS operating in anything less than a neutral and nonpartisan way, then that is outrageous. It is contradictory to our traditions, and people have to be held accountable.President Obama • Commenting on an admission that the IRS targeted conservative groups, many associated with the tea party, during the 2012 election cycle, following an apology from an IRS official on Friday and this morning’s leak of the Inspector General’s report to ABC News. President Obama’s comments came during a joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron, who’s currently visiting Washington D.C. to discuss the war in Syria. source
This timeline reveals at least two extremely unethical actions by the IRS. One, as early as 2010, they targeted groups for political purposes. Two, they willfully and knowingly lied to Congress for years despite being aware that Congress was investigating this practice. This is an outrageous abuse of power.Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.) • Decrying actions within the Internal Revenue Service, which apologized yesterday for the targeting of Tea Party/conservative groups for special tax status scrutiny. An inspector general’s report is expected to be released later this week, and portions obtained by the AP suggests IRS officials knew of such targeting not just during the full throes of the 2012 election, but dating back to mid-2011. The report claims that Lori Lerner, head of the division of the IRS handling tax-exempt organizations, was told about the politically-motivated targeting (flagging of groups using the words “Tea Party,” “Patriot,” and Glenn Beck’s “9/12 Project”) back in June of 2011, and that she told agents to “immediately” change their criteria for applying that increased scrutiny. If so, her instruction seems not to have had much effect, as the undue flaggings continued into the following election year. source
The Comcast-owned MSNBC will be the subject of a protest next week at the cable giant’s annual shareholders meeting in Philadelphia.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, a Tea Party group invited 60,000 activists to show up at the meeting to accuse the network of masquerading left-leaning propaganda as news.
Wait, so does this mean they aren’t aware of the same criticism lobbed against Fox News… except from the other side?
Our pal Meg Lanker has been dealing with some Tea Party drama over in Wyoming. Here’s a sample from her piece on the matter:
The Tea Party’s influence might be waning in other parts of the country, but here in Wyoming, its influence is growing — particularly in certain pockets of the state. As far as I’m concerned, these people are not patriots. They are opportunistic, paranoid weasels, just the type that Richard Hofstadter wrote about in his seminal 1964 essay, The Paranoid Style of American Politics. As Hofstadter warned:
“But the modern right wing, as Daniel Bell has put it, feels dispossessed: America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high…
“The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms—he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point. Like religious millennialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date fort the apocalypse. (“Time is running out,” said Welch in 1951. “Evidence is piling up on many sides and from many sources that October 1952 is the fatal month when Stalin will attack.”)
As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish.”
The Cody-Big Horn Basin Tea Party may as well have existed in 1964, in the McCarthy era, and in the 1850s when the Know-Nothings plotted to wrest control of the government and oust the Catholic and immigrant menace.
Not exactly the most fun-sounding thing in the world, is it? Read more over this way.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) could see a primary challenge from local businessman Matt Bevin, who sources say is reaching out to Tea Party groups in the state to gauge support for a 2014 Senate run.
Sarah Duran, president of the Louisville Tea Party, told The Hill that Bevin had been in touch with her over the phone to discuss his run multiple times over the past few weeks, and that he met with the group two weeks ago to discuss his interest in the race.
While exploring one’s options is far from being the same as declaring candidacy, the emergence of a strong Tea Party alternative like Matt Bevin could hurt McConnell in the long run, particularly if it forces the Senate stalwart to move any farther to the right on hot button issues. With many expecting actress Ashley Judd to challenge McConnell as well, the five-term Senator could have his work cut out for him during the 2014 midterm elections.
Ever wanted to join a site that was like Facebook, except with a clunkier name and more of a Tea Party vibe? We have you covered. I want to see Fincher make a movie out of this. (ht vpbiden)
The arrangement was simply FreedomWorks paid Glenn Beck money and Glenn Beck said nice things about FreedomWorks on the air. I saw that a million dollars went to Beck this past year, that was the annual expenditure.Former Freedomworks head Dick Armey • Discussing, in an interview with Media Matters for America, the financial relationship his group had with Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, two men the organization paid millions of dollars simply to say good things about Freedomworks and the Tea Party. Armey calls the spending “ineffective,” stating, “If Limbaugh and Beck, if we were using those resources to recruit activists and inform activists and to encourage and enthuse activists, that’s one thing. If we are using these things to raise money; one, it’s a damned expensive way to raise money; and two, it makes raising money an end on to itself not an instrumental activity to support the foundation work that our organization does.” So basically, Freedomworks pays a ton of money to the people that would be most likely to support the Tea Party anyway.
Dick Armey no longer has an armey. He’s stepped down from FreedomWorks, the Tea Party-enabling organization he helped found. ”The top management team of FreedomWorks was taking a direction I thought was unproductive, and I thought it was time to move on with my life,” he told Mother Jones. “At this point, I don’t want to get into the details. I just want to go on with my life.” Could this be an early death knell for the tea party?
ABC’s Diane Sawyer talks to Bob Woodward about his new book inside last summer’s debt ceiling crisis.
“It’s so serious that they couldn’t tell the world how bad it was at the time.”
Good interview; in it, you learn about Boehner’s chain-smoking and the seriousness of the issues Obama faced with the debt ceiling situation.
If 2010 was the year the Tea Party cost the GOP several winnable seats, then 2012 could be the year Republicans’ own candidates cost them control of the Senate.The Atlantic’s Josh Kraushaar • Commenting on the slew of weak GOP candidates running for the Senate this year. Kraushaar makes a subtle but important distinction between now and 2010, when Republicans lost several winnable Senate seats by nominating weak candidates (here are two examples). In 2010, many of the candidates in question were insurgent Tea Party types who—to the chagrin of party elites—ran against establishment Republicans in the primaries and only gathered reluctant, late support from the party. This year, however, it’s the establishment’s own hand-picked candidates who are underperforming in polls. The first candidate profiled in the piece, 31-year-old Josh Mandel, is a good case study of why being young and sharp doesn’t necessarily translate to political skill. A refreshing read for election buffs tired of presidential coverage. source (via • follow)
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So basically, we’re posting this song by classic rocker and Eagles member Joe Walsh because of the awesome mustache in the cover photo. Oh, and also, because he hilariously chose to endorse Tammy Duckworth, the opponent of his Tea Partyin’ namesake, Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh. The congressman’s spokesperson responded as such: “Is anyone really surprised when Tammy gets support from the liberal entertainment industry?” Yes, when the support comes from Joe Walsh.
Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar optimistic despite Tea Party challenge: ”We’ve got a vigorous campaign. I believe in fact that we’re going to win the campaign,” he said this morning about the primary challenge he’s facing Tuesday. Lugar, an 80-year-old moderate Republican who has served six terms, is behind opponent Richard Mourdock by ten points according to some polls, and is barred from running as an independent in the general election by state law. So if he loses tonight, that’s it. Think he’ll win? (photo by James Brosher/AP)
Utah’s nominating convention on Saturday favors Hatch: Back in 2010, a fellow Republican Senator, Bob Bennett, lost his seat in a similar nominating convention, facing tough competition from Tea Partiers, eventually losing his seat to current Sen. Mike Lee. Hatch, who spoke very unfavorably of his competition, is looking fairly strong in polls leading in to the convention, which picks the candidates which eventually will take the Republican nomination. If Hatch can get 60 percent, he can avoid a primary outright. And recent polls show that he’s at 59 percent, with a 4.43-percent margin of error and 15 percent undecided. Utah is strongly Republican, so winning at this convention is tantamount to winning the race. If the 78-year-old Hatch wins, he says it’ll be his last term — he’s currently finishing out his sixth term. (photo by Gage Skidmore) source
“This is why I’m running; to stop the Tea Party,” New Jersey Rep. Bill Pascrell says in this new campaign ad. That’s no coincidence. Democrats are suddenly feeling emboldened to take on the Tea Party after a series of polls show they’re falling out of favor. The WaPo’s Aaron Blake has more.
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