Politico Absolves IRS: Actions Were Not Partisan

Politico reported on the IRS Inspector General report on the systematic targeting of grassroots conservative groups for extra scrutiny. And, ultimately, in its article Politico has done what it does best: Pretend to report on a story but ultimately give Democrats cover by declaring the story a non-story. 

The opening sentence sets the tone for the whitewash: 

The most hotly anticipated IRS probe since Watergate didn’t exactly live up to the hype.

Knowing that politicians and journalists are generally lazy and don’t spend much time reading, the opening sentence serves a huge purpose here. It gives thousands of DC denizens a talking point to use whenever the explosive IRS scandal is mentioned.  

Politico pretends to deliver facts about the IG report with the headline: 5 takeaways from IRS report, but then writes off any suggestion that the IRS acted in any partisan way, despite the fact that the report says employees blocked every single group with the words “tea party,” in their name: 

Republicans looking for a smoking gun on partisan motive will have to keep looking — the report stops short of calling the IRS intentionally partisan, even if the questions might have been inappropriate.

There you go. Nothing to see here. Politico buys the official word from the IRS and regurgitates it for their readers, who are looking for exactly the assessment provided: “It wasn’t partisan to single out ‘tea party’ groups for extra scrutiny, just mis-management.” 

Nice to see that the political watchdogs at Politico are so willing to accept the findings of a government agency and doesn’t see fit to question the official line. If they’d been around in 1973, they’d be lunching in the shadow of the Nixon Memorial over on the national mall.