Rudy Giuliani (who is still a thing?) was on TV today trying to compare Chris Christie’s bridge scandal to “the IRS scandal.” You may remember this as the firestorm whipped up by the House Republicans on one of their many Oversight Committee witch-hunts, led by Darrel Issa, which asserted that the IRS was targeting conservative political groups unfairly for heightened scrutiny. Giuliani feels that Christie could have not known about the bridge closures by his senior aides, like how President Obama didn’t know what the IRS was up to.
Did someone forget to tell Rudy that it turned out that the supposed IRS “scandal” was made up? Like, not even partially a thing that ever actually happened? Because, you know, the rest of us got that point cleared up quite a while back, last June. As I wrote then:
The so-called IRS scandal just fell apart completely as documents surfaced showing they were also scrutinizing applications for left/liberal/progressive code words, not just tea party code words. In other words, they were doing their jobs, not being partisan.
So why did it take so long for IRS documents showing targeting of progressives to show up after those showing tea party targeting? Oh, no reason, except that House Republicans specifically asked the IRS to audit ONLY its records on tea party groups. So NBD, they just 100% manufactured a fake scandal from thin air.
The IRS doing its job, and applying that equally to both conservative and liberal scofflaws, is not a scandal. The Port Authority closing part of a major bridge to punish a political opponent of the Governor of New Jersey is.
