Republican shit-making dredges up the IRS "scandal" again

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It's back. And by "it," I mean the IRS "scandal" that Republicans spent so much effort last year trying to turn into a smoking gun of Obama White House corruption and Democratic partisan evildoing:

The House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to hold Lois Lerner, a former Internal Revenue Service official accused by Republicans of abusing power, in contempt, laying bare the bitter divide over which much of the midterm elections will be fought.

It was a moment of high drama, complete with allegations that the White House oversaw a Watergate-style cover-up that helped steal a presidential election, and invocations of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and his delusions of widespread conspiracy.

Republicans spent much of the day laying out a case for why the Obama administration is politically corrupt and, by extension, why Democrats could not be trusted with power. In doing so they revealed the issues that, in addition to unhappiness with the Affordable Care Act, will form the legs of the stool on which their campaign strategy will rest.

Republican leaders hope that with the series of events they set in motion with the vote, which passed 231-187 along party lines, they will expose a pattern of cover-up and political whitewashing by the White House.

This is all just partisan theater, part of a desperate attempt by Republicans to find a line of attack, a scandal, that will work this year now that Obamacare, the object of so much of their idiotic outrage, has proven to be a rousing success. It's why Benghazi has made a comeback of late, and now the IRS. Republicans are just hoping something, anything will stick.

Which is to say, their "strategy" basically consists of making shit up and trying to deceive and terrify voters into voting for them in November.

Which is pretty much standard operating procedure for the GOP.