"Can you see in your mind's eye a way that this might not have been political, that this was a misguided stupid way to sort, but that they didn't intend it to be some kind of political attempt to harass the Tea Party?"
So actually asked CNN's Candy Crowley of her guest Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) concerning the Internal Revenue Service scandal Sunday (video follows with transcript and commentary):
CANDY CROWLEY, HOST: Moving on to the IRS problem at this moment, which is really sort of in its infancy. There will be lots more hearings coming up this week and probably after that. Everyone we've heard from so far at the IRS, and this includes interviews with folks at the Cincinnati building where this was alleged to have started, they all say this is not political, that this was an attempt to kind of get a hold of this influx of applications for tax exempt status. Neither you nor, well maybe you do, I don't know how that process works, but we do know that this one place processes 70,000 applications. Can you see in your mind's eye a way that this might not have been political, that this was a misguided stupid way to sort, but that they didn't intend it to be some kind of political attempt to harass the Tea Party?
SENATOR RAND PAUL (R-KENTUCKY): I would think if there was any chance that this was a mistake, the investigator general wouldn't be coming out and saying otherwise, and the IRS themselves wouldn't be admitting that they made some mistakes
CROWLEY: Well they say it's a mistake. The question is whether it's political.
So Crowley actually thinks it's possible that this wasn't political?!?
To quote syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, "You've got to be a knave or a fool to say that and you have to be an idiot to believe it.”
