George Will: If IRS Under Bush Admin Targeted Progressives 'We Would Have All Hell Breaking Loose'

Alicia Powe | May 14, 2013 4:06 PM

Conservative columnist George Will is now calling out the Obama Administration after the IRS admitted Friday that they targeted conservative groups with the phrases “Tea Party,” “Patriot,” “Freedom,” or “Constitution” in their tax-exempt applications for extra audits, prior to last year's elections.

“The question is, how stupid do they think we are?” Will exclaimed on Sunday’s broadcast of ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. “Just imagine, Donna Brazile, if the George W. Bush administration had IRS underlings, out in Cincinnati of course, saying, ‘We're going to target groups with the word 'progressive' in their title,’ we would have all hell breaking loose.”

“The Tea Party people have known about this and were working on this,” Will said. “But they said — it was just some odd underlings out in Cincinnati who did this and there was no political motive whatever involved.”

This is the 40th anniversary of the Watergate summer here in Washington Will pointed out.

He then noted that one of the items in the 1973 impeachment articles of then-President Richard Nixon, which ultimately led to his resignation, described the Nixon administration’s use of the power of income tax audits in a “discriminatory matter.”

"He has through his subordinates and agents endeavored to cause in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner."

“We would have every major liberal newspaper in America calling for an investigation, hinting at impeachment,” he said. “It would be leading the evening news, we would have every group that had liberal or progressive tendencies demanding answers and marching on the White House and leaders of Congress—Democrats in Congress, demanding to have answers—it would be a nightmare at the Bush White house had this been done on our watch.”