Obama is shocked, SHOCKED!, that #IRS was harassing/intimidating Conservative groups

**With apologies to Captain Renault….

“Don’t tell me: …you’re ‘shocked’, right?”

Are we really supposed to believe that Obama is dismayed and distraught at revelations of political intimidation within the IRS? That (according to Allahpundit) he “just found out about this on Friday”?

Is our President honestly expecting us to swallow the following tale: that for some inexplicable reason, a rogue band of low-level IRS flunkies took it upon themselves to target the political enemies of this Administration, all without Obama’s imprimatur?

Based on his rhetoric today, why yes, that’s exactly what we’re supposed to believe. Courtesy of Talking Points Memo:

“If in fact IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported on, and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that’s outrageous,” Obama said during a joint press conference with Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron.

“And there’s no place for it. And they have to be held fully accountable. Because the IRS as an independent agency, requires absolute integrity and people have to have confidence that they’re applying it in a nonpartisan way.

I’m thinking that any chance at that has just been blown to smithereens.

Yep, the man whose flunkies have openly tried to marginalize those who he felt were his political enemies, ever since he’s been in office, now expects us to buy his incredulity in this case? And all while coming on the heels of the newest findings in the Benghazi hearings?

Feel free to mark me down as “skeptical”.

We’ve documented Obama’s team as being generally clueless, time and time again, whenever something unsavory is found to have happened. The IRS scandal is yet another troubling example in a long pedigree of illicit actions against their critics. The now almost trite question, “What if Bush had done “x”?“, doesn’t even need to be asked anymore: the airwaves would be so thick with self-righteous Liberal outrage, they’d block out the sun.

Courtesy of the Free Beacon, here’s Newt Gingrich’s take on all this (appearing on MSNBC, no less!), which echos the question which we asked on Saturday:

“Look, he has a huge problem because Obamacare relies very heavily on the IRS. Now every American understands there are elements of the IRS that go off on their own, do what they want to. The effort now (of course) is to say it was “low-level employees”.

Yet, those “low-level employees” apparently saw public reports that they weren’t doing what they were doing and nobody informed anyone in the IRS, let alone the Treasury.”

(…)

“How can you put Obamacare under the Internal Revenue Service? Remember, this is the administration which will not profile terrorists but profile patriots? Profile Constitutional groups?

I mean, this is almost madness.”

“Almost”? No, Newt, this IS madness.

The President does indeed have a huge problem here, and it boils down to “trust“. If you do not trust the person in charge, it becomes impossible for that person to lead effectively. Faced with such resistance, what does he/she then do to enact their goals?

Logically, that leader really only has three options:

• (A)  try to win back some degree of trust with honest investigations into the root cause of the initial problems,
• (B)  resign himself to diminished influence until his leadership ends, or (and most disturbingly):
• (C)  attempt to implement his goals through sheer force, subterfuge, or both.

That third option is the one I fear most, and thus far, I’ve seen nothing to dissuade me from thinking that is Obama’s preferred choice, now & always.

Of course, such a thought likely already has me on a “special” list at the IRS: