Republicans on Capitol Hill are abuzz with the possibility that the scandal at the Internal Revenue Service will lead to tax reform. Media strategist Frank Luntz is advising them to harness public outrage to reach this goal.
This path will dead-end. Republican tax-reform plans remain vague, because that's the way they stay popular. And the leading Republican tax-reform ideas have no real relation to the facts of the scandal. Republicans generally want to broaden the tax base, lower rates and reduce the number of brackets. The IRS could have harassed conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status — the core of the current scandal — even if we did all of these things with a flat tax.
Conservatives disliked it when Democrats responded to the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, by proposing gun regulations that wouldn't have done anything to stop it, and that disconnection is one reason the regulations didn't have enough political momentum to pass. That example should make Republicans think twice about using the IRS scandal to flatten taxes.