Obama’s body language was unmistakable in yesterday’s news conference, announcing the resignation (firing) of Acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller. Like everyone else in the Administration, including Obama himself, we find ourselves juggling two possible theories about his actions: Incompetent or Liar?
Prior testimony to Congress, when asked about these very questions in 2012, Miller either didn’t know or lied.
What we also know is that losing your job in the Obama administration, especially for being a good soldier, usually means an even sweeter gig in some future think tank. Witness Van Jones. The paycheck and the clout doesn’t stop.
So, when Obama strode, actually skipped, to the microphone yesterday, he had on his Bad Cop face, in and out in what, three minutes flat? People rarely get to see that, Obama being stern, rigid, managerial, steely-eyed.
The IRS Flap
There are some deep crimes here, crimes which Obama cannot fake too much outrage over, since his campaign benefited mightily from illegally-released IRS information on a whole host of Obama opponents, from the Koch Brothers to Mitt Romney.
In hindsight, it seems the timing is perfect to shut the IRS “operation” down, since 1) it achieved its main goal of suppressing tea party voter turnout in several key swing states in 2012, and 2) served up a stinging “hurts, don’t it” notice about what happens to people who get too antagonistic to this government’s processes. I’m sure trying to get an appendectomy under Obamacare will come with the same loyalty tests for bureaucratic approval. And if you want to drop a new downspout off your gutters, the same. Somehow EPA will get wind of the application and suspend your application for further study.
Look for it. The message has been sent.
And Obama intends for the “new” IRS, under new leadership, to go right back to the same old ways, only with no need to be so apparent and threatening, as they were in 2011-2012. That dog is dead. Served it purpose.
John Boehner is right, people need to go to jail. And only under that threat, (and not being fired with a 20% pay raise waiting down on K Street), will the scope of this IRS crime be exposed. We already know the stink runs to the White House and campaign staff, it is just for some intrepid Republican to out-joust Harry Reid to prove that.
Obama’s media game
If Obama’s bad cop routine worked, we’ll quickly see the media roll over and bark, for we’ve all been wondering since this IRS news story broke whether a real wedge had developed in the media. Was their outrage real, or just Memorex?
Recall the outrage of John Stewart only two days ago. (9 minutes, funny, but expletives deleted, also can be seen from Moos Room at UP, here, ). Stewart is the unofficial spokesman and “true journalist” for the 18-28 Low Information Voters, and therefore a significant player in keeping the Obama Luv Train on the tracks.
If he was serious, what Stewart said here represented a major break with Obama, highlighting a kind a left the LIV’s don’t really want to go along with…a spying, threatening tyrannical government.
So, did Obama’s bad cop mollify Stewart, or was it just a game?
Was it only mock outrage from Stewart in the first place? After all, he began this 9 minute set with a 3-minute rant about Benghazi where he got all the facts wrong.
(We have had, and will have attacks on American embassies from now til doomsday, for that is a matter entirely in the hands of people who want to kill us. In our entire history, America HAS NEVER had an attack on its interests and people in which the attacks were forewarned, and protection and repeatedly denied by the government, and which multiple deaths occurred in a firefight that lasted almost as long as it took Lindbergh to cross the Atlantic in a single engine airplane, while those same government officials stood idly by.)
Still, Stewart pooh-poohed this incident, and used it as segue into Obama’s latest high crime of siccing the IRS on conservatives.
It’s Still Benghazi, Stupid
So it can be argued that Stewart’s first mission was to damn Obama for a sin he can easily forgive next week, while trying to permanently bury an atrocity of immeasurable greater magnitude (as bad as the IRS crime is).
The Media Wild Card, Splitting the Herd
Personally, I believe a wedge now exists in the media, although none of you should delude yourselves into believing that anyone in the media has developed a conscience as we know the meaning of that word.
Let me premise this by saying that by the time-tested socialist/Marxist model succeeds, there will come a time to declare as much as half the current media expendable. Once power has been achieved, the state just doesn’t need that many networks or journalists out there gumming up the works anymore. It’s to be expected that the state would begin pitting them against one another soon, applying little tests. The AP phone records seizure may well be just such a test.
Among his many theorems, Rush Limbaugh has one that all journalists, like gays, feminists, environmentalists, are “Liberals” (leftists) first. That’s not entirely true, Rush, for they all see the government as a means to their particular parochial end, and not as an end unto itself. E.g., gay men are consumed with their sexual identity, not their statist affiliations. Trust me. Of all the constituent elements of the Left, the state-for-the-sake-of-the-state contingent, true Marxists, may well be the smallest, albeit right now, the most powerful.
In the case of the media, they are all consumed with their self-image; their Charlie Rose introspection, their Tom Brokaw diffidence, their Anderson Cooper savoir faire, their Christiana Amanpour unflappability, their Barbara Walters ability to not slurp their thoop while thipping it.
Style and appearance matter to the media, and they don’t like appearing to even condone thuggish behavior, such as this IRS scandal. They don;t like to be made to appear supporting up the sort of thuggery the IRS employed, much less the AFL-CIO. Many I am sure have been unnerved by it all. (They don’t even like having to interview Richard Trumka up close.)
So for reason of pure vanity, many of the media can be, not so much brought over to our side, as taken away from Obama.
This will be an interesting three-act play to watch play. For a lot of media names will be looking for work come 2017. That’s my bet.
