For the past week we’ve been watching the Tea Party and GOP create a false “political scandal” claiming that Tea Party groups were unfairly scrutinized by the IRS just because they were lunatics conservative when they were applying for tax-exempt status as 501(c)(4) (Which if the IRS REALLY obeyed its own rules they would NEVER be eligible for anyway.)

But now its coming to light that the Tea Party wasn’t being “targeted” and the IRS was just doing its job.

Bloomberg is now reporting that Democratic-leaning groups faced similar inquiries from the IRS.

The Internal Revenue Service, under pressure after admitting it targeted anti-tax Tea Party groups for scrutiny in recent years, also had its eye on at least three Democratic-leaning organizations seeking nonprofit status.

One of those groups, Emerge America, saw its tax-exempt status denied, forcing it to disclose its donors and pay some taxes. None of the Republican groups have said their applications were rejected.

Progress Texas, another of the organizations, faced the same lines of questioning as the Tea Party groups from the same IRS office that issued letters to the Republican-friendly applicants. A third group, Clean Elections Texas, which supports public funding of campaigns, also received IRS inquiries.

The false sense of outrage from the right obscures the simple fact many of the applicants really aren’t “social welfare organizations” under Section 501(c)(4) and are more like political organizations that are required to disclose their donors.  Nonetheless, none of the Tea Party applicants were denied c4 status but a Democratic group was.   Plus, most of the applicants were from Tea Party-affiliated organizations; thus, greater numbers of them were given scrutiny.

These scandals this these bogus reports of targets say more about the sad state of the GOP, the death rattle of the Tea Party and the unprofessionalism of the media than they do about anything else.