Did IRS Cheating Turn the 2012 Tide?

Study finds IRS suppression of Tea Party swung 2012 election

A new study by the American Enterprise Institute -- "Do Political Protests Matter? Evidence From The Tea Party Movement" -- finds that the movement boosted Republican turnout by three to six million votes in the 2010 election. This effect was blunted in the 2012 election, though, because growth in the movement stalled.

That slowdown happened, co-author and AEI economist Stan Veuger notes, at the same time that the IRS began coming down hard on these groups. He argues in a RealClearMarkets.com article that this most likely had a major impact in the 2012 election.

"The founders, members, and donors of new Tea Party groups found themselves incapable of exercising their constitutional rights, and the Tea Party's impact was muted in the 2012 election cycle," Veuger said.

He added: "The data show that, had the Tea Party groups continued to grow at the pace seen in 2009 and 2010, and had their effect on the 2012 vote been similar to that seen in 2010, they would have brought the Republican Party as many as 5 to 8.5 million votes compared to Obama's victory margin of 5 million."

As they say in the stock prospectus "Past performance may not predict future performance" or some such.  The rapid initial growth of the Tea Party was not likely to continue into the future.  Certainly, the most committed people are apt to be the early joiners, and the less committed, in terms of time, energy and money, would be those who might have been persuaded to join later, in response to Tea Party solicitations that would have been made easier by the tax exempt status that the various groups sought.


But we don't really know for sure, do we? And that is one reason that the clearly political actions of the the upper IRS management, Lois Lerner, Sarah Hall Ingram, and Danny Werfel need to be investigated and if found to have been in violation of any laws or regulations, punished to the maximum extent possible. To have clearly partisan political hacks in the federal bureaucracy with their thumbs on the scales of elections is simply.

And that ignores the problem that the rank and file workers at the the IRS and many similar agencies in the federal government are predisposed (by paycheck) to favor the party that promises to expand government, and subtly sabotage the party that does not in millions of small and unseen actions.

Therefore, my "modest proposal".  Fire half of all IRS personal (randomly if it makes you feel better) and replace them with conservative activists.

Or maybe we can try a hockey analogy, and make part of the opposing team sit out the next election on a penalty time out.