You’d think they’d never seen a scandal before.
Like the nerd hero of some R-rated sex comedy who suddenly finds himself alone with a willing girl for the first time, some on the Republican right are giddy, hyperventilating and acting a little goofy at the troubles now plaguing Team Obama. Not that one can’t understand their eagerness. It must feel like Wile E. Coyote finally nailing that bleeping Road Runner after years of Acme product failures. Similarly, after years of trying to manufacture scandals out of Palin mumblings, Limbaugh rantings and pixie dust (see ACORN, Shirley Sherrod, death panels and birthers), the right suddenly finds that it finally has some charges of real substance with which to yoke the White House.
News that the IRS has unfairly targeted conservative groups is, indeed, troubling, outrageous and offensive to our fundamental notions of fairness and freedom. You’d think it would be difficult to overstate the seriousness of these misdeeds. But the modern conservative movement starts out with overstatement and works its way up from there.
So, conflating this disaster and the less-compelling Benghazi story, a chorus of figures on the right — Dick Morris and Allen West among them — has begun raising the dread specter of impeachment.
Then you have Peggy Noonan calling the IRS debacle “the worst” scandal since Watergate.
And Michele Bachmann calling it “far worse than Watergate.”
You even have a few bloggers who’ve dubbed it — you can’t make this stuff up — the worst. Scandal. Ever.