Is it game over for Grover Norquist?

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 19:20:00 +0000

Two meetings in Washington today tell the story of the decline of Grover Norquist, the conservative activist who is seeing his near-iron grip on GOP tax policy over the past two decades slipping. One is Norquist’s weekly “Wednesday Meeting,” a gathering of “more than 150 elected officials, political activists, and movement leaders” who plot strategy and coordinate messaging every week. After big losses at the polls in last week’s election and a fracturing conservative base just as Congress heads into its most important tax negotiations in years, it's safe to assume that this morning’s meeting was tense.

There was a time when almost every single elected Republican in Washington and even state capitals would sign Norquist’s anti-tax pledge, which binds elected officials to a promise not to raise taxes under any circumstance. As recently as last year’s negotiations over the debt ceiling, Norquist had fealty from a majority in the House of Representatives, including Speaker John Boehner and the entire GOP leadership. "60 Minutes’" Steve Kroft labeled Norquist “the most powerful man in Washington.” Those who violate his pledge could long expect to face attack ads aimed at unseating them, bankrolled by Norquist's massive war chest. Americans for Tax Reform spent almost $16 million on independent expenditure ads in 2012. Crossing the group has always increased the likelihood of a primary challenge.

Tax the rich!

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 15:35:00 +0000

In a media-driven nation whose lingua franca is story and whose culture is obsessed with narrative arc, 2012 not surprisingly delivered a television-powered presidential campaign rooted in oversimplified parable. Republicans manufactured the tale of an up-from-the-bootstraps businessman working to defeat a communist Manchurian Candidate. Democrats, meanwhile, told the tale of a grounded, grassroots middle-class populist working to stop a ruthless Gordon Gekko disciple from performing a hostile takeover of the federal government. Both fables were deceptively creative with the facts, often driving the campaign debate into free-association collages of phrases like "you didn't build that," "apology tour" and "Bain Capital." Considering this, one way to read the election result is to conclude that Americans simply didn't want a plutocrat in the White House and that therefore, there is no single policy mandate for the winner.

Salon.com > congressional republicans

Is it game over for Grover Norquist?

Tax the rich!