IRS Scandal Drives Down Obama Job Ratings

According to Dick Morris, longtime Washington insider political analyst with Oval Office experience, there is no chance President Barack Obama knew nothing of the IRS targeting conservative groups. Why else would IRS Commissioner Douglas Schulman have visited the White House 157 times during the period that groups with "tea party," "patriot" and other conservative buzzwords in their names were being targeted for extra scrutiny. "The incredible frequency of the White House visits — essentially weekly — indicate that Obama must have been deeply involved with the inner workings of the audits and harassment of conservative groups." Morris asks what other reason would have brought Schulman to gthe White House. "Not ObamaCare. Not without having (Health and Human Services) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in attendance, you wouldn’t," Morris says. "About Treasury issues? Deficit reduction? Not without Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner." The reason, Morris says, is that Obama was following the IRS actions with an "obsessive, personal involvement." The Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court that opened the political process to groups and individuals until then excluded galvanized Obama into action, Morris says, and "tapped so deeply into his psyche that he was determined personally to supervise the castration of the wealthy people and groups whose access to the political system was opened wide by the Court." Schulman held a subordinate, non-policy making position, Morris said, so to have seen him 157 times, Obama had to have been "a president on a mission." The scandal is not one of a rogue agency, Morris says, but one of a rogue president using the agency for his personal purposes. "An instrument of vengeance, or self- defense, and of political influence." President Richard Nixon was doomed, Morris notes, when the public realized that his own paranoia had infected his entire administration...when we realized that [Chuck Colson] was operating as Nixon’s man doing Nixon’s bidding based on the needs of Nixon’s psyche." The public now realizes that the IRS harassment went deeper than was initally admitted," Morris said."This scandal will destroy him.". ~~~~~ And, dear readers, the latest results of the Quinnipiac University poll seems to show the effect of what Dick Morris calls presidential "paranoia." President Barack Obama's job approval rating has taken a big hit in the wake of the accumulation of White House scandals. Fewer than half, 49%, of the registered voters surveyed now believe Obama is "honest and trustworthy," going from 58% the last time the question was asked in September 2011. The IRS scandal is hitting Obama hardest, the survey found. The voters, who were surveyed between Wednesday last week and Tuesday of this week, think the IRS scandal is more worrying than those surrounding the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi or the seizure of phone records from journalists. More people now view the president negatively than positively - 49% say they have a negative view of Obama, while 45% have a positive view. One month ago, before news of the IRS controversy broke, the president's job approval rating was more positive than negative, at 48 to 45%. When it comes to the individual scandals surrounding the Obama administration, 44% of voters see the IRS prying into conservative groups as the most important, while 24% say they are most concerned about the administration's handling of the terrorist attack in Benghazi, and 15% say the records seizure at news organizations is most important. Many voters, 43%, believe criticism of the administration's handling of the Benghazi attack as "just politics," while, more than three out of four voters, 76%, believe a special prosecutor should be appointed to investigate the IRS scandal. That figure includes 63% of Democrats, 88% of Republicans, and 78% of independent voters. "There is overwhelming bipartisan support for a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS," said Peter Brown, assistant director of Quinnipiac's Polling Institute."Voters apparently don't like the idea of Attorney General Eric Holder investigating the matter himself, perhaps because they don't think highly of him," Brown said. Holder got a negative 39% job approval rating, compared to 23% who approved of the way he is doing his job. But the poll also shows that 73% of voters believe that dealing with the economy and unemployment is a higher priority than investigating these three issues. Only 22% disagree. According to the poll results, political parties and groups are generally held in disdain. Voters have an unfavorable view of both the main parties and the tea party. And a minuscule 3% of voters surveyed say they trust the federal government to do the right thing all the time, 12% says they trust the feds most of the time, 47% say some of the time, and 36% say hardly ever. A congressional election today would be evenly split, with 38 percent saying they would vote for a Republican to sit in the House of Representatives and the same number saying they would vote Democrat. What is President Obama's own take on his responsibilities? In September 2012, President Obama said on 60 Minutes that he bears responsibility “for everything--to some degree." However, President Obama received more than $110,000 from IRS employees for his 2008 and 2012 campaigns, topping all rival political candidates, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis.