Dan Rather On IRS Scandal: 'Obstructionist' Republicans Sharing 'High Fives'

While many members of both political parties have demonstrated outrage over the IRS scandal involving the targeting of conservative interest groups, former CBS anchor Dan Rather told MSNBC that the whole situation was not as serious as it has been labeled.

Some conservatives have reportedly likened the IRS scandal to the Watergate Scandal under President Richard Nixon. A number of Republican operatives broke into Democrat headquarters in the Watergate building in the Foggy Bottom area of Washington and a number were later prosecuted. Nixon of course famously resigned following the fallout.

"We're not anywhere in the same cosmos as [Watergate]...We don't know whether [President Barack Obama] was aware that this [IRS scandal] was happening [unlike Nixon's alleged involvement]," Rather said.

"Republicans are always eager to jump on almost anything and [compare it to] Watergate," Rather said, commenting that party leaders are likely "slapping high fives" over the "trifecta" of scandals rocking the Obama administration this month.

The admission by IRS official Lois Lerner comes on the heels of a Congressional investigation into an alleged cover-up of the facts regarding Benghazi consulate attack of 2012 by those under the auspices of then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The third pillar that Dan Rather was referring to was a recent report that the Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., had allegedly kept tabs on phone records of employees at the Associated Press.

"President Obama must feel like he's Gulliver tied down...Can he get anything done in this second term as president with the Republicans playing this obstructionist role?" Rather rhetorically asked anchors Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.

Dan Rather himself was the subject, and later casualty, of a controversy of his own. In 2004, Rather aired a report on "60 Minutes Wednesday" on CBS, saying that documents had been discovered from 1972 discussing President George W. Bush's alleged actions; written by his former commanding officer in the National Guard, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian.

According to Rather, Killian wrote that "Lieutenant Bush" called him to talk about "how he can get out of coming to drill from now through November," in addition to a number of other alleged instances that Bush attempted to shirk his duty.

An independent panel later determined that in constructing the report, "CBS News failed to follow basic journalistic principles" as the news organization put it. CBS News later admitted that the report by "60 Minutes Wednesday" was "neither fair nor accurate" in regards to President Bush's time in the Texas National Guard, and Rather soon left his anchor position with the network.

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