Americans in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll sharply reject special scrutiny of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service, suspect an administration cover-up of the Benghazi incident and express substantial distrust of the federal government more generally. Yet the national survey also finds no backlash against Barack Obama, at […] Read more »
Partisan Interest, Reactions to IRS and AP Controversies
So far, public interest in a trio of controversies connected to the Obama administration has been limited. Roughly a quarter (26%) of Americans say they are closely following reports that the IRS targeted conservative groups. About the same number (25%) are tracking the Benghazi investigation, and even fewer (16%) are […] Read more »
Ruckus over Benghazi, IRS is driven by politics
Americans are divided over whether to believe the White House on controversies over the Libyan attack that killed a U.S. ambassador and the Internal Revenue Service targeting of Tea Party groups, but they overwhelmingly agree on this: The furors are going to make it harder for President Obama to get […] Read more »
Pre-Scandal Polls on IRS, Tea Party
The Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of tax-exemption applications from tea party and other conservative groups has driven the news cycle in Washington this week. The congressional hearings and resignations have already begun and the word “scandal” is again at the front of the Beltway lexicon. … Amid the headlines, we […] Read more »
I.R.S. Targeting of Conservative Groups Could Resonate in 2014
My rule of thumb is that a vast majority of alleged political scandals will have less electoral impact than the conventional wisdom initially holds. … But the recent admission by the Internal Revenue Service that it targeted conservative organizations with terms like “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in their names when […] Read more »
The IRS and AP controversies spell trouble for Obama and Democrats
The Justice Department has “secretly obtained” two months of conversations between Associated Press (AP) officials in a move called “unprecedented”. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Cincinnati office singled out new conservative groups for extra scrutiny over the past couple of years. One of these controversies alone would have caused a […] Read more »