On MSNBC last night, host Alex Wagner continued her ongoing “leave the IRS alone” theme with a defense of the organization and its key players that tread into the territory of virtuosity in the art of reversing the spin. Not only, Wagner would have you believe, is the IRS not guilty of anything, not only were conservative groups not harmed or hampered in any way, but in fact it is the IRS who is truly the victim of unjust targeting. They are not the aggressor but the innocent victim, the simple, plainspoken agency that gosh darnit just wants to do its job for America and can’t because Republican meanwiches.

Wagner spends a great deal of time in the heady throes of indignant hysterics. Throwing around terms like “shameless,” circus,” and “witch hunt.” Republicans, she reasonably explains, are following Darrell Issa on a “dark mission.” Are you scared yet?

You see, Issa’s “insanity” has buried the “real story’ she claims. That real story being that the IRS, and not the conservative groups it singled out, are the ones who are really being targeted. Her stinkiest comparison of all, however, is to McCarthyism. Yes, investigating the IRS is the same as The Red Scare.

It is hilarious to see partisan hack democrats like Wagner mystified that anyone might have hostility toward the IRS. In her pampered world of privilege and the comfort of the liberal feedback bubble she inhabits, such hostility is indeed a mysterious point of view. “No one I know voted for him” ignorance in practice. But the alarming alarmism and heated hyperbole of comparing investigation of the IRS to McCarthyism is more than just the slipshod journalism of the disengaged and unaware. It is the telling reaction of the hardcore liberal who sees the IRS as the engine of social change. How can you resent the IRS, when we all know they are the ones taking the wealth we wish to redistribute? Hater!

This is not Wagners first defense of the poor, put-upon, noble IRS. She previously declared that it was Congress who had, and was worthy of, contempt, as opposed to Lois Lerner, and dogonnit could everyone stop wasting Lerner’s precious time finally? And is it any surprise? Wagner gives the game away when she eventually, after all her McCarthy bell ringing, finally says that basically the conservative groups were asking for it anyway.

Because in the end, that’s how the liberals feel about this. It’s no big deal, nothing happened, there’s nothing to see here, and besides, conservatives are bad and SHOULD be targeted so what’s up??

We all know what MSNBC is, of course. But sometimes a person can stand out as absurd even among the routinely absurd. So congratulations, Alex Wagner. You stood out.

Well … sort of.

You can see the full segment here: