What if G. Gordon Liddy had shown up at the Watergate, and the DNC office door was unlocked?

“The IRS tea-party audit story isn’t Watergate; it’s worse than Watergate.”

That’s the new meme, and I get it.

But, as I keep saying:

Many of these “tea party” groups are, as Ann Coulter has said of the major ones, cynical personal fiefdoms, set up to collect money and provide their founders with a sense of self-importance.

They’re the new televangelists of the Right.

This is true of countless “foundations” and “charities” across North America.

Your kid dies so you set up a “foundation” in their name, to “raise awareness” — but mostly to feel important for the first time in your life, collect a bunch of money from suckers, and maybe, if you are very lucky, become a celebrity like John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted.

These audited tea party groups would never have been investigated by the IRS if they hadn’t applied for charitable tax-exemptions and the other perks of being officially recognized by the State.

The very idea of organizations supposedly opposed to a bloated, interfering State apparatus asking for official recognition from that self-same apparatus is absurd.

Poland’s Solidarity, the French Underground, the Weathermen — hell, the original “Tea Partiers” — did they incorporate themselves and ask the State to recognize them and grant them status and privileges?

“We pledge our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor… but only as long as we can get a tax-deductable receipt”?

The IRS is evil, but the tea party groups they targeted were idiots at best, and hucksters at their worse.