But of course, there’s nothing scientific about any of this: clearly, Andreas Madestam (from Stockholm University), Daniel Shoag and David Yanagizawa-Drott (both from the Harvard Kennedy School) are engaging in rightwing conspiracy mongering, says Doug Mataconis:
The leaps of logic that Veuger, Pethokoukis, and Noonan are engaging in here would made an Olympic high jumper jealous. As I’ve already noted, it’s very dubious that the Tea Party movement of 2009-2010 would have maintained the same level of enthusiasm and growth in the run-up to the 2012 elections. Moreover, the extent to which the Tea Party was responsible for the GOP victories in 2010 is, at best, debatable. While they obviously paid an important role in keeping the enthusiasm of voters who otherwise identified as likely to vote Republican, exit polling after the 2010 election made it quite clear that the issue motivating most voters was the economy not jobs, not the issues that the Tea Party was raising such as government spending and health care reform. Given the state of the economy, it was quite likely that the GOP was going to gain seats in 2010 with or without the Tea Party, then, although you could possible argue that the wave that gave the GOP control of the House was in part due to Tea Party generated voter turnout. However, to a large degree, I would argue that the role the Tea Party played in the 2010 elections has been highly exaggerated by many on the right.
Another flaw in the Veuger/Pethokoukis/Noonan hypothesis is the idea that IRS scrutiny of Tea Party groups, leaving aside any motivation behind it for the moment, had any real impact on the 2012 election. As David Weigel notes, by this point in the Tea Party movement’s evolution the actual organization of the Tea Party was being handled by well-funded groups such as Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity. Additionally, it’s public face could be seen in groups such as Tea Party Nation and Tea Party Patriots. All of these groups had tax-free status going back years and were not caught up in, or even affected by, what was going on with the IRS. More importantly, as Wick Allison notes, it’s difficult to find any connection between the IRS’s examination of the 501(c)(4) applications of some number of mostly local Tea Party groups and the outcome of the 2012 Presidential election.
Mataconis’ argument is quite lengthy and I invite you to read it all.
But as you do so, remember this: what Mataconis relies upon is that it is impossible to prove a negative: we can’t know that the IRS’s targeting of TEA Party had any impact on elections — and we can’t know this because the IRS targeting of the TEA Party created a political situation in which we can’t reasonably extrapolate out just how much of an effect the targeting had. Convenient, that.
Of course, Veuger, in his analysis of the study, notes that exact reservation, writing,
It might be purely accidental that the government targeted precisely this biggest threat to the president. It may just be that a bureaucracy dominated by liberals picked up on not-so-subtle dog whistles from its political leadership. Or, it might be that direct orders were given. In any case, it doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to note that the president’s team was competent enough to recognize the threat from the Tea Party and take it seriously. The Obama campaign has made no secret of its efforts to revolutionize turnout models for the most recent campaign. Its remarkable competence turning out its own voters has been widely discussed, and it seems quite plausible that efforts to suppress the Republican vote would have been equally sophisticated.
We may never know to what exact extent the federal government diverted votes from Governor Romney and thus, how much it influenced the course of a presidential election in the world’s oldest democracy. At the very least, however, Americans of all political persuasions can be forgiven for a little cynicism when the president has the nerve to say, as he did on May 5th in his commencement address to graduates of the Ohio State University: “You’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. You should reject these voices.” And that cynicism, that lack of trust in the country’s governing institutions, becomes harmful quite easily: when the people are asked to have faith in the NSA’s efforts to protect the nation from terrorist threats, for example.
So we’re left answering the question: is the least transparent and most partisan administration in history capable of intentionally trying to blunt the impact of a movement that (Mataconis’s rather absurd dismissal aside) brought about a wave election in 2010, or is it more likely that that movement simply organically reached its peak and started to die down, not because of any outside molestation, but rather because people were just kinda turned off by all this talk of small government, the dangers of socialized medicine, etc?
It’s become de riguer to suggest that even raising such questions marks one as “insane sounding”. But what the fuck: I’m willing to risk it.
When you can’t be shamed by the rhetoric of your political and ideological enemies, the sting of what they believe to be sneering jabs feel more like the pathetic limp-wristed slaps of those who are starting to realize that they’ve been punching above their weight too long, and hope to get in a few more scratches before you wake up and knock them on their asses.
To be called insane by such as Sargent is meaningless. Actually, pretty much everything asserted by Sargent is meaningless…
On the surface, it would seem that a confidence man would have the most profound respect for the function of trust in human relationships, despite that, or precisely because that, it is his aim to violate (at will) any or even possibly every situation of trust laid before him.
But if we only look at the manifest ease with which TheClownDisaster tosses away any ground for trust by his every action, something screwy is revealed regarding either the premise of our general belief about the care of confidence men in respect of trust, or TheClownDisaster, as an exemplar of the type isn’t doing it right, or else he doesn’t correspond to the “type” con-man at all. He just doesn’t seem to give a shit. But what does that mean? Could be as simple as that he just doesn’t know that he should, I guess, due possibly to a lifetime of skating experience. Otherwise? What?
I know it did here. Our local Tea folks (when they weren’t our old Goper’s pretending to be Tea folk), weren’t all Republican voters when all this shit started. They were, mostly, small-business owners. In fact, they were pretty solidly anti-Bush and anti-bailout back in 2009. By the time 2012 had rolled around, the “organization” that was running bar-b-ques and meet and greets and information sessions, and county-fair booths was simply gone. The people were around, and pissed, but the organization? gone.
“Insane-sounding to whom?” is always the right challenge to that accusation, because the answer is “to those who hated your guts before you opened your mouth.”
Making “insane-sounding” a pretty good-sounding gig.
He just doesn’t seem to give a shit. But what does that mean?
It means no more and no less than this: “I Won.” It’s been like this from the beginning.
It means he’s already run his con, and now he’s just taking his sick sadistic pleasure in twisting the knife, laughing at all of us as we try to get our money back. It means he doesn’t need anyone’s help any more, because he intrinsically understands that he controls everything and doesn’t have to pay any attention to Congress or the Courts or the States or the People.
Outside the Beltway? Perhaps when he started, but nto for several years now. The left wing echo chamber has chased away all the commenters who don’t toe the line with the exception of a few people who do manage to make the right look like lunatics.
That’s because it’s effectively Mataconis’s site now.
– The point that asswipe cleverly ovoids is in any situation where the electorate is split down the middle, 47%, 47%, 6% independents, ANY influence can be huge. Which is of course the very reason why the Left engages in any and all scams they can think of, since any effect can tip the balance. That these tactics are beneath the perview of the average conservative makes them all the more effective.
– not a single word of which you will ever see Mataconis mention.
I don’t know McGehee, even Dr. Joyner’s occasional posts make it clear he’s become a big government Republican.
I’m not sure Joyner ever wasn’t a big-government guy. I consider that sufficient explanation for why Mataconis runs the place now.
But when Joyner was more directly involved in it, the trolls were fodder, not the board of directors.
What a thick bell end. When it takes that long to explain yourself then you’re digging yourself a nice deep trench. Apparently the man is unfamiliar with the list of questions the groups were required to answer. The dumbass says outright most the work is done by two t-party groups that were not affected by the IRS abusive politically motivated maltreatment, to the advantage of Party. *salutes*
The man says outright most the work is done by two groups not affected.
Fox Butterfield, you dumbass, is that you?
The rest were discouraged. And not just regular discouraged, either, dumbass. Seriously OMG the IRS boot-on-the-neck discouraged. That means something. And yet readers are treated to endless paragraph upon paragraph of carefully explained painfully strained analysis saying otherwise. Drop dead.
OTB has become a lefty site, sadly. I mean, when the first commenter says “Obama is black. Therefore he cannot be legitimate.” and gets 44 likes, that is indicative of something, right? It’s a fucking absurd assertion, yet 44 likes and only 9 dislikes (that’s including mine).
Mataconis is playing to his audience, here, I think. I think he’s overstaking his claim, and he’s attempting to mask that overstaking with a great lot of conversation in lieu of evidence one way or another. It’s just fine for him to think what he thinks, but it’s also fine for me to point out that it’s more opinionation than anything else.