Confirming a new attorney general is near the top of the new Senate’s to-do list. The power not to confirm the president’s nominees is near the top of the Republicans’ new consignment of political clout. Needless to say, without the White House, the GOP can’t implement their preferred policies, but they can use the confirmation process for quid pro quos. They should focus on the president’s AG nominee, Loretta Lynch, and they should refuse to confirm her until she commits to appointing a Special Prosecutor to investigate the IRS.
So long as the Justice Department is controlled by the Obama administration, it’s going to obstruct any investigation that might embarrass the White House. So the Republican Senate can hold hearings—on Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the keeping-your-doctor fiasco, the outing of the CIA station chief in Afghanistan (remember that?), and any other cover-up it’s inclined to try to unravel. But the IRS’s persecution of Americans of a particular political stripe is far and away the most important scandal of the bunch. It’s the defining corruption of the era.
