[SomeCallMeTim]

Wow, if you're being downvoted for saying that, I guess there must be a lot of Tea Party supporters here who are misusing downvotes to express disagreement.

Or maybe they don't get that political organizations should not ever be charitable "social welfare" organizations, on the left or the right.

In any case, it seems to me that you've got an excellent point. And the fact is that there's tons of evidence that the IRS was just being slow, not partisan, INCLUDING the linked article.

"Tea Party", being a politically based category, seems like a natural red flag for the IRS, just as "Progressive" or "Libertarian" would be. It's really hard to believe that most of these organizations WOULD have qualified. If someone created a non-profit named "Democrats for Social Justice," I would equally expect the IRS to think twice about approving "charitable" status.

[samolang]

First of all, the IRS admitted to and apologized for specifically targeting conservative groups. Denying it at this point is absurd.

Second of all, the legal definition of a "social welfare" organization is that it spends at least 51% of its money on social welfare. So legally it's allowed to spend the other 49% of its money on politics. Plenty of organizations, both liberal and conservative, take advantage of this rule.

[SomeCallMeTim]

>51% of its money on social welfare

That's a pretty sucky rule, but regardless, I'd still have a hard time believing a "Tea Party" group would ONLY spend 49% of its money on politics, so I'm sorry, but I have to say "ha ha" that they missed a chance to influence the election.

I don't care if they apologized. That's PR 101 these days, regardless of fault. They also targeted progressive groups. And open source groups, apparently. Maybe they did target MORE Tea Party groups, or maybe there were just more Tea Party applicants than progressive group applicants. Regardless, it's all mob mentality lynching of the IRS without enough evidence to know what was really going on.

And I guess people who point out that it's not necessarily an actual conspiracy get downvoted for bursting that particular bubble. So be it.