So the IRS "scandal" is really about Obamacare?

Congressional Republicans are trying to exploit two controversies bedeviling the Obama administration to undermine the health care reform law. They are using an uproar over misguided tactics by Internal Revenue Service employees to target conservative political groups seeking tax-exempt status as an excuse to prohibit the agency from playing a pivotal role in carrying out the Affordable Care Act. And they want to use a controversy over efforts by the secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sebelius, to encourage private donations to help enroll people in new health care exchanges as a cudgel to disrupt such efforts.  ...

... Republicans have scheduled hearings to try to link the scandal to health care reform. Putting any limits on the I.R.S. role in determining health subsidies for uninsured Americans would be disastrous  ...NYT editors

As the Times reminds us, the Congressional Republicans have used 15% of their time and votes -- since 2011 -- on trying to lame or kill Obamacare.

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So far (and it's been "so far" for a long time) Obama's numbers remain steady.

... A new Washington Post-ABC News poll also finds that allegations of impropriety related to the controversies have yet to affect President Obama’s political standing.

The president’s approval rating, at 51 percent positive and 44 percent negative, has remained steady in the face of fresh disclosures about the IRS, the Benghazi attack and the Justice Department’s secret collection of telephone records of Associated Press journalists as part of a leak investigation. ...WaPo

Well, the economy is improving, after all.  And for a long time now the public has been reacting to Republican antics with a kind of "blah, blah" response.  We're entertained by their trouble-making, but we don't approve of it.  And more of us dislike the tea partyers than have any respect for them. 

In the end, the winners are, as always, the media.  As long as we buy them, they'll continue to sell us a diminishing democracy.

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Ezra Klein also looks at why the Republicans' endless attempts to bring Obama down have failed.  For a start, in terms of presidential wrong-doing, there's no there there.  Of course, if there were...

Republicans believe the worst of Obama, but they already believed the worst of Obama. Democrats (correctly) see Republicans pushing these things because they are out to get Obama and stop his agenda and/or they think Obama is responding correctly to the problems that do exist. So it’s like almost every other issue or controversy.”

This could change if clear evidence emerges tying Obama to the IRS, or showing that something more sinister happened in the aftermath of Benghazi. But absent such revelations, these scandals are likely to simply harden the Democratic perception that Republicans are out to get Obama, and the Republican perception that Obama is a corrupt president.

Think about this in your own life: Have you seen anyone in the media, or do you actually know anyone personally, whose opinion of Obama has flipped in the past week?

In a country this polarized by party, the news needs to be quite extraordinary, and the blame quite clear, if it’s going to actually change people’s core political beliefs. Otherwise, most people just take it as proof that they were right all along. ...Ezra Klein, WaPo