“staffers in the agency's Cincinnati office were trying to manage the deluge of applications for tax-exempt status under the 501(c)(4) section of the tax law. Between 2010 and 2012, Lerner said, the number of 501(c)(4) applications leapt from 1,500 to more than 3,400.”

Frankly, there are a lot of fraudsters out there, and when there started to be a large number of new conservative nonprofits started by people without prior experience running such organizations, the field was ripe for folks to step in with fake charities, so they could collect money from outraged “tea partiers”.

As an example, Ben Carson’s whole political campaign is basically a direct mailer donation scam (the people running it were previously running supplement scams, etc.) which somehow transcended its original scope and turned into a real campaign, much to the surprise of Carson and his buddies.

It’s not surprising that the IRS staffers would notice a pattern of abuse with a pretty good hit rate on particular keywords, and then target groups with those keywords for increased scrutiny, making them fill out a few extra forms. It was stupid of them to do so, because the political fallout is predictable. But it’s hardly the roaring scandal it’s made out to be.