Indeed, the whole point of the overly complicated US tax code is to provide politicians with a way to manipulate people into behaving the way the politicians want them to behave. It's a bit silly to create something that was specifically intended to serve political aims and then complain when people use it to serve political aims in ways that are slightly different in some obscure way from the way they wanted political aims served.
Here's an article that provides some background:
A Brief History of IRS Political Targeting
Here's an article that provides some background:
A Brief History of IRS Political Targeting