by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
NRO’s\u00a0The Corner<\/em><\/p>\n If it is proven that the IRS\u00a0thwarted some groups from obtaining tax-exempt status in fear that their traditional or\u00a0conservative messages might hurt the 2012 Obama campaign (especially if it did so under pressure from White House-affiliated operatives),\u00a0and if it is\u00a0proven that the Obama administration deliberately ignored warnings about lax security at the Benghazi consulate, missed real opportunities to send help, or deliberately massaged intelligence reports in order to mislead the pre-election public about the true nature of Benghazi in order to further a false campaign narrative of a near dormant\u00a0al-Qaeda and a calm progressing post-Qaddafi Libya, then the scandals point to the\u00a0potential corruption of the electoral process itself.\u00a0The election\u00a0outcome may have been successfully affected by these Machiavellian tactics. More will come out, as the scandals work themselves up the chain of command. We still do not know the circumstances of why Mr. Nakoula was suddenly jailed\u00a0after being denounced by the president and Susan Rice. The fate of Petraeus and the role of his\u00a0communications are thus far baffling and raise similar questions about the role of the election. We have entirely forgotten the issue of why there was a sizable CIA presence in Benghazi to begin with.\u00a0Unfortunately, the upcoming Obamacare \u2018train wreck\u2019 and the AP wiretaps are not long enough tails to wag these dogs away.<\/p>\n The president\u2019s press conference, after Jay Carney\u2019s dismal performance, was one of the worst since Richard Nixon\u2019s 1974 meltdowns, especially given that he used the conditional\u00a0 \u201cif\u201d about the IRS acting\u00a0improperly \u2013\u00a0after the IRS had already confessed to just that fact. Obama also mentioned the uncertainty of the catalyst for the attack \u2013\u00a0though he is most certainly on the record for blaming the attack on a film-maker in\u00a0Benghazi\u2019s immediate aftermath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner If it is proven that the IRS\u00a0thwarted some groups from obtaining tax-exempt status in fear that their traditional or\u00a0conservative messages might hurt the 2012 Obama campaign (especially if it did so under pressure from White House-affiliated operatives),<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[78,362],"tags":[1045,1026,357,710,447],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1xS","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5966,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-president-won-sort-of\/","url_meta":{"origin":5944,"position":0},"title":"The President Won–Sort Of","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 21, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The administration spent the last six months of the campaign in cover-up mode. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online On September 11, 2012, Barack Obama was 1 point ahead of Mitt Romney in the ABC and\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0polls. He was scheduled to meet Romney in three weeks for the first\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campaign 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/campaign-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5950,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-second-term-embarrassments-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":5944,"position":1},"title":"Obama’s Second-Term Embarrassments","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 16, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Hope and change\" is looking like the 1973 Nixon White House. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online In Barack Obama\u2019s 2008 presidential campaign, he ran to the left of Hillary Clinton as a moral reformer. Obama promised to transcend the old politics and bring a new era of hope-and-change\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mainstream Media"","block_context":{"text":"Mainstream Media","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/mainstream-media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6331,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-mother-of-all-scandals\/","url_meta":{"origin":5944,"position":2},"title":"The Mother of All Scandals","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 13, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media IRS? A system of voluntary tax compliance cannot survive a dishonest IRS. Lois Lerner and company have virtually ruined the agency. For the foreseeable future, each time an American receives a tax query, he will wonder to what degree his politics ensures enhanced or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Benghazi"","block_context":{"text":"Benghazi","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/benghazi\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6311,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-watergates\/","url_meta":{"origin":5944,"position":3},"title":"Obama’s Watergates","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 6, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Denial, evasion, \"Let me be perfectly clear\"--is this 2013 or 1973? by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online The truth about Benghazi, the Associated Press\/James Rosen monitoring, the\u00a0IRS\u00a0corruption, the NSA octopus, and Fast and Furious is still not exactly known. Almost a year after the attacks on our Benghazi facilities,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/79713948_47244e8c2a.jpg?fit=400%2C273&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7272,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-truth-drips-out\/","url_meta":{"origin":5944,"position":4},"title":"The Truth Drips Out","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 1, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ NRO's The Corner\u00a0 For over a year and a half the White House successfully withheld communications between public servants, apparently in hopes that the death of four Americans in Benghazi would not become an issue in the 2012 election (at the eleventh hour CNN\u2019s Candy\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Benghazi"","block_context":{"text":"Benghazi","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/benghazi\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6042,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/pick-you-scandal\/","url_meta":{"origin":5944,"position":5},"title":"Pick Your Scandal","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 11, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Violating Americans' privacy while failing to identify the terrorists among us. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online All can agree that the Obama administration is mired in myriads of scandals, but as yet no one can quite figure out what they all mean and where they will lead. Benghazi\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5944"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5944"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5945,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5944\/revisions\/5945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}