As the Obama administration scrambles to address scandals surrounding the Sept. 11 Benghazi terrorist attacks and the recently revealed IRS assault on conservative groups, Michael Barone probes similarities between the two sets of events.
What do the Benghazi cover-up and the IRS scandal have in common? They were both about winning elections under false pretenses.
Winning elections, after all, is something Barack Obama is good at. He obviously loves campaigning and delivering grand orations to enormous adoring crowds.
He loves it so much that he flew off to Las Vegas to campaign the day after the first murder of a U.S. ambassador in 33 years.
What actually happened in Benghazi was out of sync with the Obama campaign line. Osama bin Laden was dead. Al-Qaeda was on the run. The global war on terror — well, don’t call it that anymore.
A deliberate effort to mislead the voters was launched. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, White House press secretary Jay Carney, and the president himself talked about a spontaneous protest of an anti-Muslim video — even though no evidence of that came from Benghazi. …
… The fact is that the targeting of tea party groups by the IRS helped Democrats win elections. It’s hard not to believe that at least some IRS employees intended it to have that effect. Those who leaked confidential information certainly did so.
The president has denounced the IRS misconduct in strong terms – “if” it happened. He acknowledged that any targeting of one point of view by a government agency is wrong.
But in 2009 at Arizona State University’s commencement, he noted that he had not been given an honorary degree and added that the school’s president and board of regents “will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS.”
That doesn’t sound so funny now.
