The Fight Was Unfair

Most Americans believe in a fair fight, especially in politics. Though the United States population has grown by a factor of more than 100 since its founding, Americans hold to the ideal of the town hall: let everyone have their say, give people time to think and talk about the issues, vote (in secret, to avoid retaliation), then move on to the business of living.

That's one of the reasons that the use of the Internal Revenue Service to suppress conservative speech has resonated across the country. By refusing to grant conservative organizations exempt status before the election and by illegally leaking the names of conservative donors (thereby subjecting them to harassment), opposition voices were stilled. The fight was unfair.

Peggy Noonan:

Almost a month after the IRS story broke—a month after the high-profile scandal started to unravel after a botched spin operation that was meant to make the story go away—no one has been able to produce a liberal or progressive group that was targeted and thwarted by the agency's tax-exemption arm in the years leading up to the 2012 election.

President Obama may well have won re-election anyway. The partisan use of the enormous powers of the IRS guaranteed it.