The other day I asked on twitter whatever happened to that idiot from Unskewed Polls and whether or not he had been hired by Fox news or the RNC. Turns out he has been really busy promoting the theory that what the IRS scandal is really all about was stealing the 2012 election. And, to carry on the cause, our old friend James “Dude, Where’s My Recession” Pethokoukis takes to the AEI website to promote the idea:
1. Let’s say Tea Party groups had continued to grow at the pace seen in 2009 and 2010.
2. And let’s further say that their impact on the 2012 vote would have been similar to that seen in 2010. A new paper co-authored by AEI’s Stan Veuger estimates the grass-roots movement generated 3 million to 6 million additional Republican votes in House races in the midterms.
3. The 2012 result would have seen as many as 5 million to 8.5 million additional GOP votes versus a President Obama victory margin of 5 million votes. And right around now, Mitt Romney would be pushing hard to implement his tax reform plan, and #44 would be launching the Obama Global Initiative.
But then, of course, if allowing all of those orgs tax exempt status is what flipped the election, then those orgs should not have been granted tax exempt status as non political entities in the first place.
Comrade Dread
But saving the country from the Mooslim Kenyan Socialist Usurper is engaging in social welfare. Duh.
Rafer Janders
Umm, why would we say that? For one thing, we know they didn’t keep growing at that pace, because reality and memory. And second, why on Earth would you assume that an organization would experience continued sustained growth AFTER the period of its greatest enthusiasm?
I mean, it’s a nice little trick and all, hinging your entire argument on something that didn’t actually happen and wouldn’t have happened, but it’s still a con.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
FSM, the stupid burns sooooo much.
dmsilev
Putting aside their self-refuting legal argument, the logic is that doing something which brought in x additional votes in a low-turnout midterm would similarly lead to y additional votes (y> x) in a Presidential election where turnout is higher and many of those marginal voters would have voted anyway.
FAIL.
And that’s assuming the 3 to 6 million number is at all grounded in reality. Given the past history of AEI, that’s a very charitable assumption.
gnomedad
All right …
“Tea Party groups had continued to grow at the pace seen in 2009 and 2010.”
http://youtu.be/iwU9M9sjrDk?t=1m15s
Sorry.
Chyron HR
Doesn’t that cause hemmorhoids?
burnspbesq
Outsourcing my mockery of this idiot to Dave Weigel.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/06/20/irs_scandal_bizarre_theory_asks_whether_the_tea_party_targeting_moved_millions.html
JPL
John, Since I’m sure that you have been gloating about the Patriots latest problem, why haven’t you written about it?
ruemara
That’s a mighty big bucket of stupid.
bill d
lol
That reminds me of The Simpsons:
Just Some Fuckhead
Are you talking about the toadlike fella from Richmond? I was trying to think of his name the other day too.
MikeJ
If all of those new voters had been in New York and California it would have taken 5,000,000 votes to flip those states. That would have been enough to win I suppose (~75 EVs), but somehow I doubt the teabaggers were going to pull that one off.
Todd
Jesus fuck – OT
Mike Allen of Politico is a hoarder. As in, bad hoarder.
http://gawker.com/this-is-a-picture-of-politico-star-mike-allens-old-off-518659090
Yatsuno
@MikeJ: Considering Obama’s margins in both of those states, it would have taken a helluva lot more than 5 million to make a difference there. Not to mention electoral college, how the fuck do it work?
Aji
@Rafer Janders: So here’s your problem:
Neither has ever had the slightest meaning for this crowd.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@Todd: That is just … I don’t even … words.
Suffern ACE
LOL. Let’s say that the number of Marxist countries had continued to grow at the pace they grew between 1944-46. By now, moons of Saturn would be basking in the glory of the people’s army.
nemesis
So a supposedly effective defense of unskewed polls disasterous 2012 predictions is to make more, unfounded, wildly unhinged assumptions based on nothing more than a collection of “what if”.
Lets get one thing straight. 2010 was a mid term election. The bagger influence was, as usual for groups way outside the norm, unusually significant due liberals staying away from the polls in droves. baggers did not and do not reflect America. Period.
And if Napolean has a B-52 we would all be speaking French.
Keep fucking that chicken.
Aji
@Todd: Wait, THAT’S what’s troubling you most about that piece?
From that twit, can’t say the hoarding surprises me. What does trouble me is this:
I’m so skeeved by that passage, I don’t know whether to take a shower, hide under the covers with Haagen-Dazs, or just go outside and open my wrists as a sacrifice to bring on the meteor.
FlipYrWhig
@bill d: Even more relevant Simpsons material:
Disco Stu: [making indescribable body motions] Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% for the year ending 1976? If these trends continue… A-y-y-y!
[kicks his feet up on his desk wearing see-through platforms with water and fish inside]
source
Roger Moore
Stop using logic; the wingnuts will never be able to understand you.
SatanicPanic
In other news Let’s Say died today. Preliminary autopsy reports suggest the death was caused by overwork.
ribber
The IRS thing was not about groups paying taxes or not. It was about keeping donors anonymous.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/21/the-irs-controversy-isnt-about-taxes-its-about-disclosure/
balconesfault
The local conservative radio station just sent out a link to a listener poll that basically grouped the NSA snooping and the IRS checking groups activities before granting them tax exempt status as equivalent threats to our liberty.
The stupid – they embrace the burn.
ribber
^— …which should be pasted onto absolutely every story about the IRS thing.
bill d
@FlipYrWhig: Perfect. The Simpsons is like a present day Nostradamus
Mudge
501c(4) tax exempt status is self-defined. They were tax exempt when they declared that they were. Balloon Juice could declare itself a tax exempt 501c(4) tomorrow and file a Form 990 next April and be 100% legit. No submission necessary. The IRS does not confer tax exempt status on them. The submissions were in effect nuisance submissions so the Tea Party could be “sure” what they were doing was proper and the IRS would agree not to audit their 990s.
Lack of processing by the IRS did not in any way inhibit their ability to pursue their pursuits.
MikeJ
@Yatsuno: No, Obama won NY by 2M (4.4M – 2.4M)and CA by 3M(7.8M to 4.8M). 5M new voters, all in NY and CA, all voting for Romney, could have swung it. That would have been enough to swing the EVs.
Saying “If only we’d gotten 175% of the vote we got” really makes a person look, uhm, unrealistic.
Kay
I think this is a good thing.
The longer they cling to the idea that they were robbed, the less time they spend looking at the reality of what happened in that election.
Mitt Romney had a huge, expensive campaign organization. There was absolutely no evidence of that in this county, and this is a county where he has to rack up huge R margins to blunt the D margins in counties with people in them. Nothing. No one. Just ad after ad after ad.
They got robbed, all right. They got robbed by GOP political consultants and grifters. It was an inside job.
I hope they keep looking for ACORNS and ignoring the obvious.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@MikeJ: Also assumes that Obama wouldn’t have adjusted strategy to counteract those (admittedly made-up) numbers.
This is a third-degree stupid burn.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
Fuck me, double post.
MikeJ
@Todd: Holy shit. I was expecting cluttered like a professor’s office (put that in google image search and get results like this). Cluttered but worked in. I can’t believe Allen could even get into his office.
Flying Squirrel Girl
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS): I am not a compulsive hoarder, but I DO watch hoarding shows compulsively!
Tone in DC
@Kay:
Good one, Kay.
Kay
@Tone in DC:
It happened after 2004 for Democrats. They had to face reality.
“Maybe it isn’t a GREAT idea to have 4 paid orgs “registering voters” (or whatever they were doing, mostly nothing). Maybe we should get rid of all these people and make this a liitle
leaner”
How much did they spent getting walloped by Sherrod Brown? 20 million dollars? I’m sure Ohio media outlets were happy.
Bokonon
The GOP needs to get its blame game straight. Last week, it was Paul Ryan claiming that Obamacare brought out the hoards of moochers to the polls, and this was an insurmountable thing for the GOP to overcome. The week before that, it was Mitt Romney blaming Hurricane Sandy for his defeat, and wishing it had done its damage to the east coast a week or two after the election instead. Now they are blaming the absence of … I dunno … preferential tax treatment for supposedly non-partisan Tea Party groups? It is just so hard to keep up with the blizzard of excuse making!
And – aren’t the wingers admitting that the entire basis for getting “charitable organization” treatment for these groups was a sham all along? That they were SPECIFICALLY designed to affect political races, and serve as part of the GOP’s campaign infrastructure?
Trollhattan
@MikeJ:
It’s mindboggling–can it really be real? Frealz? “There, be rats.”
Neighborhood horder, a coot of advanced age, either was moved elsewhere or has died. House is one we pass frequently and we’ve counted four or five dumpsters hauled off already, with who knows how many yet to come. The occasional open door would reveal a narrow pathway inside and up the stairs. Evidently the house had filled up because the collection spilled into his car, to the point there was only space in the driver’s seat and dash. The poor Camry’s springs were fully compressed.
.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
The grifter caucus.
Alex S.
He’s got this gig. And he’ll keep it and milk it to death because it’s his.
@Todd:
Wow, interesting. Well, I already thought that he isn’t the “independent” but always pro-republican journalist like Vandehei and Harris and that he’s a bit obsessive-compulsive with his “Win the morning” and the way he treats every little tidbit of information as a giant scoop. It seems that he really can’t see the forest for the trees.
Kay
@Roger Moore:
I treasure the Romney bus memory. Empty bus cruising Ohio and Michigan, giving the appearance of a political campaign. They supposedly had 4 of them.
People were supposed to…come out and see a bus? WTF? Who was the genuis behind that?
I love the ludicrousness of that sort of thing, and how it BECOMES “real”
joes527
If I remember correctly, this guy’s unskewed website was undisguised click bait. I’m sure he doesn’t give a shit what is coming out of his mouth so long as it drives traffic.
Yes, that’s right, crazy is a viable revenue stream.
dmsilev
@Kay:
Apparently a former management consultant built a campaign around management consulting. And we can compare and contrast with the campaign built by the former community organizer…
johnny aquitard
I believe the Germans called it Dolchstoßlegende.
Kay
@dmsilev:
I think it’s such an easy fantasy, because it is in NO ONE’S best interest to tell the truth.
Romney will never admit it, because he’s the expert manager. Consultants will never take themselves off the payroll. Media just want a horserace. Even the Obama people have an incentive to act as if they beat a well-oiled machine, because that makes them look better.
There’s no incentive to LOOK at what happened.
condorcet runner up
@bill d: which reminds me of another great wager from the Simpsons:
Krusty’s Accountant: Let me get this straight. You took all the money you made franchising your name and bet it *against* the Harlem Globetrotters?
Krusty: I thought the Generals were due!
Chris
@Kay:
This.
The utter denial that was their reaction to the 2012 election, beginning with Karl Rove’s meltdown on live TV (which was echoed by pretty much all the conservative voters I know in some way, shape or form), frankly gives me hope for the future.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
And the Democrats in general don’t want to give the Republicans any free tips.
Another Halocene Human
@Rafer Janders: It’s reverse Republican logic.
So destroying ACORN destroyed the poor black urban vote, self evidently as Romney is president except that the Chicago machine stuffed the ballot with votes from dogs and dead people. QED Amen
So clearly the IRS jackbooted thugs demotivated tea parties and ground the Express to a halt, resulting in Obummer winning the presidency because all the real american patriots failed to stand their ground and took their voting thumbs and went home. The end.
cokane
You’re too spot on sometimes Cole.
neal peart
Geddy, Alex and I love you, Mr. Cole, for your insight into this issue. You are correct, sir.
Forsetti
Hard to claim the Tea Party could have had a bigger impact if more 501c groups would have been allowed when NO Tea Partyish applications were denied. The idea that growth would continue at the same, if not increased, rate doesn’t understand the Bell Curve, Power Law and a whole host of other principles.
nemesis
@neal peart: Hey Neil, I thought you and your crew were libtards. Rand fanbioys as a matter of fact.
Sondra
@dmsilev: \
Yes but logic has never been their strong point. Just like all of those teabaggers in their motorized wheelchairs, paid for by Medicare and Medicaid, demanding the Government stay out of their healthcare needs and totally hating on Obamacare.