Grover Norquist: The man who won't go away
Barb ShellyBelow is a column I wrote a year and four months ago, when Washington was in its last bout of deficit-reduction agonies.
A few things have changed since then, but not too much. Congress still doesn’t know how to fix the nation’s pressing fiscal problems, and a guy named Grover Norquist is still a monkey wrench in the machinery.
Thankfully, it seems more Republicans are willing to stand up to the lobbyist. But, as Washington Post writer Aaron Blake says in this comprehensive look at Norquist:
“This is well-worn territory for Norquist. Every time there is discussion about Republicans voting for a tax increase, his influence on the party is called into question — and somehow his influence has continued and even grown.”
I am reposting this column because it contains some details about Norquist’s past that are often overlooked. The man has played a key role in one of Washington’s biggest lobbyist scandals. It is astounding that he managed to keep one foot in the halls of power even when it because clear that his other foot was firmly in the gutter.
GOP should stop kowtowing to Grover Norquist
(From July 2011)
For all the homage paid to Grover Norquist in Washington, you’d think we’d elected him to some high office.
Deficit hawk Alan Simpson says he’s one of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of reducing our massive debt.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says GOP lawmakers are “terrified” of the guy. He’s credited — or blamed — with thwarting attempts reduce the deficit and raise the debt ceiling.
That’s a lot of power to confer on a man who should have been consigned to the political dustbin, if not to a courtroom, five years ago.
Norquist, former executive director of the College Republican National Committee, is the leading spokesman for the poisonous notion that government is inherently bad, and should exist only to enrich the rich and empower the powerful.
Give him credit, he’s good at what he does. A master of the essential Washington arts of bullying, schmoozing and messaging, he’s branded himself as a power broker. Republicans, in particular, can’t contemplate raising revenues — even by revoking an outdated subsidy or tax credit — without risking his wrath.
But if Washington gave a hoot about ethics, Norquist would have been run out of town in 2006, when his old pal from the College Republican group, lobbyist Jack Abramoff, pleaded guilty to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials.
The Norquist express was chugging along at that time. Everyone who was anyone in Republican circles attended Norquist’s Wednesday meetings to receive their marching orders.
But the federal probe into Abramoff’s activities revealed that the man who professed to disdain government didn’t mind profiting from it in the seediest manner.
Documents showed that Norquist allowed his non-profit, tax-exempt organization, Americans for Tax Reform, to be used as a pass-through for money that Abramoff’s clients handed over to finance lobbying campaigns aimed at influencing public officials. For his trouble, Norquist kept a cut of the funds.
For instance, the Choctaw Indian tribe in Mississippi paid Americans for Tax Reform $1.1 million in 1999 alone. Norquist passed the money along to another college buddy, Ralph Reed, who was simultaneously running the powerful Christian Coalition and a for-profit political consulting company. Reed used the money to run a religious-based antigambling campaign whose veiled purpose was preventing a rival tribe from cutting in on the Choctaw casino business.
Experts said tax-exempt organizations such as Americans for Tax Reform could not legally act as a conduit for money intended to profit a private business.
Yet no charges were filed or sanctions issued. Some Republicans shied away from Norquist for a time, but he clearly has weathered the storm.
Norquist’s power starts with “the pledge.” Politicians who sign it vow not only to oppose efforts to increase marginal tax rates, but also to block “any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits,” unless they are matched by other reductions of tax rates.
Needless to say, the pledge leaves little maneuvering room when it comes to solving fiscal problems, since most economists and just about everybody with an ounce of sense agrees that new revenues must join spending cuts to reduce the deficit.
Such is Norquist’s grip on the Republican party that it was considered an act of courage for GOP senators recently to vote to repeal billions of dollars in ethanol subsidies.
Washington, we know, is a planet onto itself. But out here in the heartland, it’s pretty surreal to watch an unelected guy with a broken ethical compass bring the capital to a standstill and thwart the spirit of compromise that the majority of Americans say they want.
Who elected Grover Norquist? He did, that’s who. And Washington’s political class has not the shame, nor the spine, to send him packing.
Johnathon Busby
5 months, 3 weeks agoI don’t understand how the GOP believes their intractable opposition will help them. If everything locks up, we go back to the Clinton rates; then, the Dems put up a bill that only deals with the middle class and below.
What’s the GOP going to do then, vote against tax cuts for everybody but the top earners?
Phil Cardarella
5 months, 3 weeks agoActually, it benefits the GOP guys to have us go over the Fiscal Bump (mislabled Cliff) because then they do not have to vote for anything but tax cuts on Jan. 3.
It probably benefits all of us to go over that one-inch “cliff.” Democrats can take credit for raising the rates on the rich and the GOP can take credit for restoring any cuts from the Clinton years for the non-rich.
And, any appropriations that need to be done can be done on Jan. 3.
Oh, yes, Congress can make anything it wants retroactive to Jan.1, so the whole “cliff” thing is so much PR.
Phil Cardarella
5 months, 3 weeks agoIt would appear that both Norquist and Reed were far closer to criminal conduct that John Edwards ever was. I suspect a first-year law student could have gotten a grand jury to indict them for conspiracy to violate the election laws.
Probably lucky for them that Abramoff took the rap and kept his mouth shut.
JR Beillenhouser
5 months, 3 weeks agohttp://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2012/11/20/president-obama-clinton-prosperity-requires-clinton-sized-government/
This is a different time. Everyone talks about the Clinton rates without any real understanding of why the nation is so different today.
JR Beillenhouser
5 months, 3 weeks agohttp://www.forbes.com/sites/bruceupbin/2012/09/19/how-the-so-called-clinton-recovery-really-happened/
More interesting stuff about the Clinton days. Or why they will not return with the current administration.
Matt Henry
5 months, 3 weeks agoBut do new taxes lead to increased revenues, especially in the long run? There is ample evidence to prove just the opposite, that lower tax rates lead to increased government revenue. But to Obama, who is on record with saying that he would sacrifice growth for “fairness”, increased revenues are not really the point.
But this doesn’t fit into the false meme that the leftist media and politicians want to sell, which is that increased taxes are critical to our country’s financial health. So what do they do? They turn to Alinsky page 1 and start making personal attacks. They make the story about Grover-Freakin’-Norquist. Now any representative at any level who doesn’t get bent over about tax increases can be marginalized as a Norquist-dominated Abramoff-style coruptocrat.
The only reason Norquist has anything to do with the current “deliberations” is because the Democrats and the media want him to be the gnarly, corrupt face of any Republican who doesn’t march lock-step into an increase in taxes that will ultimately harm the country. And based on the last election there are plenty of Americans stupid enough to buy it. The whole thing is nearly as stupid as the “war against women” and the death of big bird. Jump, lemmings, jump.
I couldn’t give two dumps about Grover Norquist, despite what Barb and her fellow leftist sycophants want you to think. Don’t let them use the “politics of personal destruction” to shove harmful tax increases down our throats.
P.S. Barb, where is that Benghazi expose we keep waiting for? Or the thing about the “executive privilege” claim was in Fast and Furious? Corruption bothers you, right?
JR Beillenhouser
5 months, 3 weeks ago“Corruption bothers you, right?” It obviously depends on whose doing it. They’ve got another 4 year vacation.
Mark Hastert
5 months, 3 weeks agoThe first defection from the pledge will start an avalanche. There will be some face saving language but there will be tax increases.
I think it’s funny that now, faced with the draconian austerity of the sequester all the cut, cut, cut proponents from last summer are willing to admit that austerity will cause another recession. It’s a good sign that they might be willing find pragmatic solutions.
As an aside, did our conservative friends see FOX taken to the woodshed about their Benghazi coverage last night, in prime time? There is the real conspiracy, FOX news and the Republican apparatchiks. Fast & Furious fizzled so they’re looking to manufacture a new scandal. Seems like they just can’t get through the day without a straw boogeyman to demonize. Even Geraldo Rivera, a FOX host is tweeting that with Issa in the chair justice it will be one witch hunt after another. Well, I guess if you’re out of ideas….
Matt Henry
5 months, 3 weeks agoFor most I don’t think it is the ‘pledge’ holding them in place. Grover is not God. It is the fact that tax increases are bad for the country, bad for the economy. You know, that thing Obama said the last time the tax rates were going to go up. No, the media wants us to THINK its about the pledge. You know, my whole last post and all….
Speaking of straw men, what does the number of contractors who died in Iraq have to do with the Benghazi story? Just like Watergate, the story is the COVER-UP and that still hasn’t been answered. What we are seeing in action is the result of the sycophantic media choosing not to make something a story. There is still no logical link between what actually seems to have happened in Benghazi and the story that was put out there for a couple of weeks, including by the President himself. Because of their ‘riot’ story we are forced to choose between a completely corrupt administration or a completely inept one, unable to see with clear eyes the problems that led to this attack for weeks after the event. Which do you choose?
Susan Rice is a patsy of the Administration and never should have been accepted as the fall-guy by McCain and his ilk. The story is dying because a corrupt media culture wants it to die. Abu Ghraib wasn’t half the scandal this mess is and it led the news for two whole months and lingered for much more. You don’t have to look hard for more evidence of Bush vs Obama bias. The vast expansion of domestic spying under Obama, the failure to close Gitmo, the war of choice in Libya (without congressional approval), ad nauseum….
Same with F&F; can you imagine the blank-storm that would have come down from on media high if Bush has invoked “executive privilege”? Oh, sweet Mary. They would have noted that EP can only be claimed in situations that involves the Chief Executive, not as blanket protection for anyone in the Executive branch. This is either an admission by the President that he was involved in F&F and ITS coverup or he misused the privilege. Either way, the media would have torn Bush a brand new one, and justifiably so. But not Jamie Foxx’s “Lord and Savior.” No, not him.
That these stories will not have legs is prima facie evidence that the media is biased and corrupt.
Robert Freilich
5 months, 3 weeks agoThe article is about Norquist not Susan Rice. But just a brief rejoinder to Matt Henry’s comment: every indication, even in the WSJ’s reporting, is that Susan Rice said what she was supposed to with the information she was given, and changed it when her release was updated. Condoleeza Rice, at a different level in government, told Congress things she knew to be untrue, but diehard Bush supporters still give her a pass on that.
NORQUIST: Why do constituents of any Congressman or Senator accept that they sign off their responsibility to understand and act in response to situations by signing any lobbyist’s pledge? You elect these people to think and be aware, not to sign over future decisions to interest groups. Tell your reps to get rid of this guy.
Matt Henry
5 months, 3 weeks agoFor the sake of St. Peter, why don’t people read before they post?
If this column is not about Susan-brand Rice, it’s sure not about Condoleezza Brand either. And if you look back you might notice that I pointed out that Rice was a patsy for a corrupt administration. She didn’t know she way lying. She was sent out there to tell lies to protect the man who had to worry about an election in a month. We SHOULD be focusing on the dude who went to the UN and lied his teeth off after he knew the truth.
Next re Grover: Did you even read my post? Perhaps these reps are sticking to their guns not because of Norquist but because they know that, just like Obama said, tax increases would hurt the economy. You are hearing what the media wants you to hear and falling right into it, that anybody who stands against tax increases must be Grover Abramoff. Attack, attack, attack….
Pay attention.