As the IRS controversy percolates, an unfortunate assumption has begun to take hold -- if a conservative group was subjected to extra scrutiny when applying for tax-exempt status, it's necessarily evidence that the IRS was being unfair. The New York Times had an item over the weekend that should bring new doubts to those assumptions.
When CVFC, a conservative veterans' group in California, applied for tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service, its biggest expenditure that year was several thousand dollars in radio ads backing a Republican candidate for Congress.
The Wetumpka Tea Party, from Alabama, sponsored training for a get-out-the-vote initiative dedicated to the "defeat of President Barack Obama" while the I.R.S. was weighing its application.
And the head of the Ohio Liberty Coalition, whose application languished with the I.R.S. for more than two years, sent out e-mails to members about Mitt Romney campaign events and organized members to distribute Mr. Romney's presidential campaign literature.
Each one of these groups said they deserved tax-exempt status, and each one is now complaining that the IRS subjected them to unfair scrutiny.
We're talking about political operations, set up for political reasons, with political goals. What's wrong with that? Nothing in particular, except when these organizations insist they deserve tax-exempt status because they're not really political, but rather, they're "social welfare" entities.
Given this, it's simply absurd to assume that every conservative group subjected to lengthy IRS examination is a victim of an out-of-control agency acting on partisan motivations. If our tax laws are going to have any meaning, groups like these should be subjected to detailed IRS scrutiny. These aren't examples of the agency going too far; they're examples of the agency doing its job.
To be sure, a full investigation of the standards used by the IRS is still warranted, and reforms would be wise. Congress will hopefully start by clarifying what in the world a "social welfare" organization is even supposed to be. But the larger takeaway from reports like these is that the "scandal" isn't quite what the right hoped it would be.
As Jamelle Bouie added yesterday, "There are documented instances when the agency stepped beyond the lines of acceptability. What this shows, however, is that there's still no substance behind the idea that it was engaged in political or ideological targeting."