Here’s the hard thing Republicans have to do if they don’t want this crisis to go to waste: they have to ignore their id, the temptation of the sugar high of partisan point-scoring. They must willfully set aside Obama’s presence in the fray, leaving the short term personalized attacks on the table, and go after the much bigger prize. Obama isn’t running for office again. Liberalism is. Making this about him is a short term boost to the pleasure center of the conservative brain. Making this about the inherent falsehood of the progressive project will help conservatism win.

– “Republicans and the Long Game,” by Ben Domenech in Real Clear Politics. Read the whole thing.

The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.

– Barack Obama, then still a candidate for the US Senate in Illinois, in his keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, July of 2004.

“Congressman: IRS asked pro-life group about ‘the content of their prayers.’”

– Headline, the Washington Examiner, this past Friday.

Robert Ley could not be reached for comment.

No one can deny that Barack Obama is a highly skilled politician, at least by the measure of election outcomes. His record is undefeated, save for an ill-advised 2000 primary challenge to an entrenched incumbent congressman. His 2008 presidential victory, after a fraction of a term in the U.S. Senate, was especially dazzling. It disproved those who said that Hillary Clinton was invincible, that a left-wing Democrat couldn’t win, and that America wasn’t ready for a black president.

No one can deny that Lance Armstrong and Mark McGwire were highly skilled athletes. But their accomplishments are forever tainted by their use of banned performance-enhancing drugs. The use of the Internal Revenue Service’s coercive power to suppress dissent against Obama is the political equivalent of steroids. The history books should record Obama’s re-election with an asterisk to indicate that it was achieved with the help of illicit means.

Read the whole thing. And then check out Rick Moran at the PJ Tatler, who writes that the “Timeline of Obama Foreknowledge of IRS Scandal Continues to Slip.”  Rick notes that “The list of people who knew months ago of the IRS targeting program and yet somehow forgot to tell their boss, the president of the United States, about it is growing longer. And so is the witness list for House hearings on the matter.”

Of course, you could argue that the time begins in 2009, when Obama first “joked” about siccing the IRS on his enemies. Once Obama flashes the Barack Signal, the underlings know how to take it from there, As Mickey Kaus writes:

We now know, of course, that you don’t need direct White House involvement to politicize the IRS, at least for Democrats.** The underlings know what to do! The idea that they are apolitical professionals was always a myth.*** It’s even more of a myth now, in the era of Daily Kos and Greg Sargent. I wonder if McCurry, now safely through the revolving door, would like to revisit his statement. …

Read the whole thing, and follow the “****” for more on All the President Asterisk’s Men.

Back in 2011 we had lots of fun with Rachel Maddow of MSNBC cheerfully using one of the biggest pariahs of today’s “Progressive” environmentally-correct — the Hoover Dam — to promote the environmentally-correct “Progressive” channel that employs her. Here’s an amusing following up, found at Jim Geraghty’s Campaign Spot daily email:

Why Kevin Williamson Rocks, Vol. LMXVIII

You probably don’t need any more reasons to purchase Kevin Williamson’s The End Is Near and It’s Going to Be Awesome: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure,but I just had to share this section yesterday, dismantling Rachel Maddow’s “Lean Forward” ad featuring the Hoover Dam as a symbol of future national infrastructure projects that absolutely must be funded.

Conventional political theory holds that only the state can provide public goods such as parks, sidewalks, roads, and the like. Television commentator Rachel Maddow offered a typically exaggerated expression of this view when she visited the Hoover Dam and remarked, “When you are this close to Hoover Dam, it makes you realize how small a human is in relation to this as a human project. You can’t be the guy who builds this. You can’t even be the state that builds this. You have to be the country that builds this.” (Never mind that Hoover Dam was in fact built by a consortium of private firms headed by Bechtel-Kaiser, under precisely the sort of outsourcing/private contractor arrangement that Maddow has no time for in most other contexts — in fact, she includes a chapter in one of her books denouncing this practice.) In a sense, Maddow is correct — the Hoover Dam is an economically nonviable project from the time of its conception, and the mighty installation, visually impressive as it is, produces significantly less electricity than does a typical small nuclear power plant. Which is to say, it is a majestic boondoggle. Only politics can do that — and stay in business. And, needless to say, a “guy” attempting a project with the environmental impact of Hoover Dam would never get permission from environmental regulators, given that its construction entailed wiping out an entire local ecosystem.

So the only parts Maddow got right were the points she didn’t intend to make.

The concept that Hoover Dam was not actually built by the federal government, but was ultimately built by private companies, seemed so contrary to our usual narratives that I went and looked it up:

The Hoover Dam project was too big for any one company. So W. A. Bechtel helped form a consortium calling itself Six Companies, Inc. W. A. knew the heads of the consortium companies as friends and business associates, having been in partnerships with most of them. There was tall, lean Harry Morrison, head of Morrison-Knudsen of Boise, Idaho, and the man most directly responsible for bringing the group together; and the white-haired Wattis brothers of Utah Construction Co., the region’s foremost railroad builders. They were joined by the wry Felix Kahn of MacDonald & Kahn, a premier builder of office buildings, industrial plants, and hotels, including the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco. Phil Hart ran Pacific Bridge Co., one of the oldest construction firms on the West Coast, and was justly famous for his underwater work — a critical component in dam construction. Charlie Shea, the pugnacious, acid-tongued boss of J. F. Shea Co., was the best tunnel and sewer man west of the Rockies. And finally there was the legendary Henry Kaiser, whom W. A. had long valued for his enthusiasm and vision. W. A. Bechtel served as the second president of Six Companies; his son Steve was a member of the executive committee; and sons Warren and Ken served on the board.

Kevin is also taking no prisoners a critic, helping his local theater enforce their no cell phone rules — in appropriately dramatic style.

For my recent interview with him, click here to listen.

POTUS deploys Marines for rain in Rose Garden with Turkish PM Erdogan. twitter.com/MajorCBS/statu…

— Major Garrett(@MajorCBS) May 16, 2013

Mr. Obama started off his second term without noticing that Jon Favreau, his misogynistic departing lead speechwriter left him uttering “Peace in our time” on his way out the White House door writing for lesser celebrities in Hollywood. Today Obama channels Neville Chamberlain once again, only this time, he uses American Marines as props to hold umbrellas for himself and Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan at a joint press conference. Or as Twitchy quips, “Out: I support the troops. In: The troops support my umbrella.”

But as the scandals continue to hit the ‘Bam, it looks like he’s going to need a bigger umbrella. And who knows — perhaps not even the Marines can save him.

“Be prepared to love the Eagles’ Evan Mathis, even if you hate the Eagles,” Mary Katharine Ham writes.

I love Mashable.com’s self-lobotomized description of Mathis’ stunt:

Just what precisely Mathis is so pissed off about — other than just like, taxes in general, man — isn’t quite clear.

Yes, what on earth would cause him to do that?

Mashable adds, “But one thing is obvious: He’s not exactly having guilt pangs over the stunt.”

Presumably, the Eagles’ Obama-supporting owner will remind him of the futility of individual expression in a corporatist world.

At some point, however, that began to change, as this John McCain ad from the summer of 2008 reminds us, back when Barry seemed to totally cool and dreamy:

What wouldn’t you do for a guy like that — even if he gets a bit rough a times. He doesn’t mean it when he flies off the handle, right?

JOE SCARBOROUGH: [Reid] says he doesn’t work for Barack Obama. I think he’s wrong.

TAVIS SMILEY: Harry Reid, put down the crack pipe. You don’t work for Barack Obama? We’re all working for Barack Obama.

SCARBOROUGH: What are your thoughts? You’re going to be on Meet The Press next week, next Sunday before the inauguration. What are your thoughts as we now move closer and closer to Barack Obama being sworn in?

SMILEY: These are exciting times. When I was last year, the day after, November 5th, the day after the election, really I was excited then about what had happened and transpired the night before. As an African-american male I revel in this moment. I revel in his humanity, I revel in this victory. I love all the talk about hope and change. Here’s what I fundamentally believe, and there have been a number of examples since the election, Joe, that underscore this for me. I want Barack Obama to be a great president. I want him to be a great president. I believe that he can be a great president. But only if we help make him a great president. It is not left to his own devices, it’s not going to happen. We have to help make him a great president. And that’s not casting aspersion on him. No president who was ever great wasn’t helped in that process. There is no Abraham Lincoln without Frederick Douglas. And we could do this all day long. Every great president had people pushing them, had people helping them and encouraging them, empowering them to become great presidents. So I believe Obama can be. I want him to be. But we have to help make this guy a great president.

– “Tavis Smiley of PBS: ‘We’re All Working For Barack Obama,’” Newsbusters, January 9, 2009.

Somewhere though, the bloom fell off the romance:

NBC News Senior Investigative Correspondent Lisa Myers appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to discuss the growing AP scandal involving the Dept. of Justice secretly obtaining phone records of reporters with the Associated Press.

Myers maintained that it was unlikely that the president knew about the wire tapping because “from a political standpoint,” it would anger “one of the president’s most important constituencies, the press.” Given that, said Myers, “it’s hard to imagine they would have green-lighted this thing.”

–  “NBC News Reporter: AP Scandal Angers One Of Obama’s ‘Most Important Constituencies – The Press,’” Big Journalism, yesterday.

They are right to be angry, if a bit hypocritical given news organizations’ widespread indifference to civil liberties breaches that don’t affect them so directly. The AP records collection—by most accounts aimed at identifying a leaker inside the government—is an escalation of the administration’s unprecedented war on leaks, a war that has made journalists a secondary but no less real target of surveillance.

Final Jeopardy question: This industrialist was named a “righteous gentile” after moving to Argentina in 1949. Contestant answer: Himmler.

— Kevin W. Glass (@KevinWGlass) May 15, 2013

I now declare Western Civilization officially concluded. Thank you, good night — drive safely!

Past performance is no guarantee of future results:

President Obama “obviously likes giving speeches more than he does running the executive branch,” Chris Matthews said tonight.

Yes, you read that right: The MSNBC host who in 2008 felt a “thrill going up my leg” after hearing Obama speak has grown disenchanted. Tonight’s episode of Hardball saw Matthews delivering a rare, unforgiving grilling of the president as severe as anything that might appear on Fox News.

“What part of the presidency does Obama like? He doesn’t like dealing with other politicians — that means his own cabinet, that means members of the congress, either party. He doesn’t particularly like the press…. He likes to write the speeches, likes to rewrite what Favreau and the others wrote for the first draft,” Matthews said.

“So what part does he like? He likes going on the road, campaigning, visiting businesses like he does every couple days somewhere in Ohio or somewhere,” Matthews continued. “But what part does he like? He doesn’t like lobbying for the bills he cares about. He doesn’t like selling to the press. He doesn’t like giving orders or giving somebody the power to give orders. He doesn’t seem to like being an executive.”

On Tuesday’s program, Matthews similarly called Obama “a ship with the engine off.”

– “Chris Matthews sours on Obama,” the Politico, yesterday.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: The problem is there are people in this country, I don’t know the number maybe 10 percent, maybe 20 percent on a bad day, who want this president to have an asterisk next to his name in the history books, that he really wasn’t president. You know, like a guy in baseball who used drugs. They want to be able to say you know, he really didn’t have that batting average. He really wasn’t really the first African-American president. He really didn’t do healthcare. He really didn’t kill Bin-Laden. There’s an asterisk. They’ve been fighting like that, people like Donald Trump, since day one, they can’t stand the idea that he is president. And a piece of it is racism. Not that somebody in one racial group doesn’t like somebody in another race or group, so what. It is the sense the white race must rule. That’s what racism is. And they can’t stand the idea that a man who is not white is president. That is real. That sense of racial superiority and rule is in the hearts of some people in this country. Not all conservatives. Not even all right wingers. But it always come through with this birther crap and the other references and somehow trying to erase Obamacare, erase his record in history and a big part of it is bought into by people like John Boehner who is not a bad guy but he knows the only way to talk to the hard right is talk their language.

AL SHARPTON: No doubt about it.

– Chris Matthews, talking to Al Sharpton on their network home, MSNBC, as quoted in “Matthews: White Supremacy Heart of Opposition to Obama,” the Washington Free Beacon, yesterday.

Having committed thoughtcrime, will Matthews be forced to testify against himself as a radical agent of Emmanuel Goldstein? Let the Howard Kurtz-style showtrials begin in Media Oceania!

“Liberal Impeachment talk? It’s a Trap!,” warns blogger/radio host Peter Ingemi, aka, “DaTechGuy:”

The congress HAS to be perceived as investigating facts.  If the facts continue to go where the evidence seems to be pointing the public will demand action.

A great example of the danger of moving early was Fr. Robert Drinan (D-Mass) who introduced a resolution of impeachment on the last day of July in 1973 over the Bombing of Cambodia.  As [Tip O’Neill wrote in his autobiography] it almost blew the game:

politically , he damn near blew it, for if Drinan’s resolution  had come up for a vote it would have been overwhelming defeated by something like 400-30.  With so many members already on record as having voted once  against impeachment it would have been extremely difficult to get the to change their minds later one.

meanwhile if a vote came up and failed, Republicans, who at the time were not convinced that there was any “there there” would have said when a later resolution came up:

“Why bother?  We’ve already been through this.”

As Drinan refused to withdraw his resolution and all resolutions on impeachment are privileged the leadership O’Neill took extraordinary measures to make sure the resolution was not called up keeping one of the leadership ready  on the floor 24/7 ready to table such a resolution.  Because he didn’t want to give them the idea to move Drinan’s resolution forward.  After a long time of this he finally approached Jerry Ford who told them bluntly the White House had rejected the idea.  As O’Neill wrote:

By not forcing an early vote on impeachment, Nixon’s allies made a tremendous mistake.  In addition to winning the vote, the Republicans could have turned impeachment into a party issue which might have allowed Nixon to remain in office and blame the Democrats for harassing him, But in the summer of 1973 the White House couldn’t imagine that Watergate would end in the downfall of the president.

And that is the trap.

“The White House and their allies will do their best to wave the red flag in the hope we charge, instead we should sit back and let this scandal and the investigation cook,” Ingemi adds. Or as a commenter at the Hot Air link to Ingemi’s post writes in response:

Better yet, develop a narrative in which conservatives/Republicans are, en masse, saying things like: “We know that many, many, many people in the president’s own party are calling for his impeachment, and we certainly understand their concern. This kind of unprecedented corruption is doing real damage to the democrat party. No one trusts them anymore. So of course the president’s own party wants him impeached and tossed out of office as quickly as possible. But we are going to wait and see where these various investigations go. Like these many, many members of the president’s own party, we expect the investigations will lead us straight up to the Obama White House, straight to the Holder Justice Department, and that we’ll learn the scope of this administration’s corruption is truly staggering. But these democrats wanting to shove Obama out of there as fast as they can need to slow down so we can truly know how deep the corruption was. That’s the best way to make sure we never get another administration like this.”

Eric Holder fumbled very badly today when he lost his cool, dropped the mask, and revealed his inner liberal fascist in response to Rep. Darrell Issa, calling him “shameful” and his conduct “unacceptable” — gee Mr. Holder, are you threatening* a Congressman? That’s rather cowardly, isn’t it? And while the inner child of most leftists isn’t far under the surface, fellow Democrat Mel Watt flipped that notion on its head, bringing his tiny grandson to the hearings. The pressure is also getting to lead Obama flack Jay Carney, who brought a goofy photo montage of himself to today’s briefing, that was almost as weirdly narcissistic as his boss’s self-absorbed antics:

JAY CARNEY FOUND! BOLO canceled. Oh, crikey. He’s standing in front of a graphic of all his faces. No laughter. twitter.com/michellemalkin…

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) May 15, 2013

As even left-wing house organ Politico noted yesterday (link safe; goes to Newsbusters), “The most charitable defense offered up on background is that Obama staffers are scandal virgins, unaccustomed to dealing with a rabid press.” See also, the Washington Post-approved JournoList, of which the Politico itself has long been tainted by. Still though, that’s an odd excuse for a group led by a hardened Chicago machine hack.

But the nation should be allowed to see more of this. (Not to mention allowing the GOP to build a “highlight” reel of leftists gone wild in 2014, similar to the Democrat video trainwrecks of 2010.) One of the leitmotifs of a Bill Whittle video last year on how the left wrecked the country was “slowly…slowly…” Despite the urge to pounce as quickly and has hard as the anti-Nixon far left did in the early 1970s, that seems like a good way for House Republicans to ratchet up the pressure on the corrupt left in response:

* “Would You Believe The Administration Got Phone Records of The House Of Representatives?” Why, yes. Yes I would.