Karl Rove Melts Down When Confronted With Evidence of Bush IRS Investigation:

When David Plouffe confronted Karl Rove with evidence that his Bush administration used the IRS to investigate the NAACP, Rove melted down and stammered baloney. [...]

Rove lied about his association with GPS by leaving out one important detail. Rove isn’t on the board, but GPS works in direct conjunction with the group Rove founded and still advises, American Crossroads. Rove saying that he isn’t involved with GPS was just like Mitt Romney claiming that his presidential campaign wasn’t involved with the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future.

Plouffe was correct. Liberal groups were also targeted by the IRS. Bloomberg reported that the IRS sent the same letter to Democrats that they sent to tea partiers. The IRS did something to the liberal group Emerge America that they never did to the conservatives. They revoked their tax exempt status.

Stop me if you have heard this one before, but when confronted with evidence of the Bush administration targeting liberal groups, all Rove could do was stammer the word baloney repeatedly. Under George W. Bush, the IRS investigated the NAACP’s tax status for two years. Rove even gave the reason for the payback when he pointed to the Bush administration’s outrage over an ad that the NAACP had run. Read on...

As he also noted, Rove just kept shifting his story and went from blame Obama, to blame Democratic senators, to blame the IRS and even someone who regularly lies as much as Rove does couldn't make these allegations stick.

If we had a better corporate media in this country, people like Rove would not be allowed to come on the air and lie at all without being excoriated by the host of that show, instead of the guests having to call him out. Stephanopoulos, like the better part of his fellow Sunday bobble head show hosts, is pretty well useless in that regard to put it charitably.

Transcript here.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But Arianna, still nothing here touching the White House?

HUFFINGTON: No, not touching the White House. But there's no question that even a lot of Democrats are very upset about the way Holder has not just been pursuing what he's been pursuing in terms of leak investigations, but remember last year bragging to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he has investigated more cases than any previous administration. So, the IRS is a big problem that goes beyond the two parties. It's really about the whole status of 501(c)(4) and what are the about? You know, theoretically they are there to promote social welfare exclusively in one paragraph, primarily in another paragraph.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And they're not supposed to do too much politics?

HUFFINGTON: They're not supposed to do too much politics. I'm sure if we look at Crossroads GPS, you know it's all about politics...

ROVE: No. No. No.

(CROSSTALK)

ROVE: No. No. Please. Please. GPS, Crossroads GPS, an organization I helped create, but I don't run it. I'm not on the board, I'm not an officer. But the leadership knew right from the get-go they were going to be looked at closely. So the laws and rules that the IRS has promulgated for decades were followed very closely by GPS for exactly that. They knew they'd get extra scrutiny. Look, I -- I love this...

HUFFINGTON: So why don't you...

(CROSSTALK)

ROVE: ...no concern about...

(CROSSTALK)

ROVE: ...no concern about...

(CROSSTALK)

HUFFINGTON: (Inaudible) same problem with the left.

ROVE: Well, but you know what? You're the first person I've heard on the left say that. Because these groups, 501(c)(4) groups have been active for years on the Democratic side, on the liberal side. And there has been no criticism. There was no criticism from the left in 2000 when the NAACP voter fund spent $10 million to run an ad accusing George Bush of being a bigot. No concern on the left when Americans United for Change ran television ads targeting Republican Senators...

(CROSSTALK)

ROVE: ...up for re-election in 2007 and 2008 over the Iraq surge. So...

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: David, go ahead, and then I want to bring Gwen in?

PLOUFFE: Well, I'd say first of all, you know back in the previous -- or the prior administration, the NAACP was investigated after Republican members of Congress asked for it. But there's been no suggestion -- the independent -- the prosecutor looked at this -- excuse me, the inspector general, and said there was no politics involved in this. No one has indicated at all that the White House is involved. The IRS director was appointed at -- under President Bush, served under both presidents attested. No one from -- so, this was not a political pursuit.

ROVE: Baloney.

PLOUFFE: No, no it wasn't, Karl.

ROVE: Boloney. Well if it was not political, then why are only conservative groups being targeted?

(CROSSTALK)

ROVE: Why...

(CROSSTALK)

PLOUFFE: There were liberal groups targeted.

ROVE: Oh really? Name one. Name one.

(CROSSTALK)

ROVE: When a group had Tea Party or Patriot in its name, then it was targeted.

PLOUFFE: This was not...

ROVE: Not a single liberal group has -- has appeared to say...

(CROSSTALK)

PLOUFFE: You're taking great license here, Karl.

ROVE: No, I'm not.

(CROSSTALK)

ROVE: Not at all.

PLOUFFE: This was not an effort driven by the White House. It would be the dumbest political effort of all time, OK?

ROVE: I didn't suggest it was being driven by the White House. But I do think that when the president...

(CROSSTALK)

PLOUFFE: So you think some people in the Cincinnati office decided...

ROVE: No. No. I think people sitting in Cincinnati, Laguna Niguel, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. listen to people like Senator Max Baucus, Senator Chuck Schumer. President Obama -- when President Obama goes out in 2008 and -- 2010 and calls these groups, quote "A threat to the democracy.", he's -- he's blowing the dog whistle, and people heard it.

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: How do you explain it when the administrator who was overseeing this went back and said, actually narrow the guidelines, was trying to get them to change it and they wouldn't do it?

ROVE: Well look, it -- that's my point. We have a culture at the IRS that has been going after conservative groups. And this administration has done an ineffective job of managing it. When this issue came up in 2010, if the administration was serious about it, President Obama should have picked up the phone, and called Geithner at Treasury and said, you'd better get your assistant secretary from Treasury or the undersecretary to check into this, because this is corrosive to our democracy to have the IRS targeting conservative groups.