No matter what he tells you, it wasn't one of Grover Norquist's better weeks. Not when some of his anti-tax fraternity pledges have decided that there might be a life after the Big Bad Wolf has huffed and puffed to blow their vulnerable house down.
As you have probably heard a million times since the election, Grover Norquist is the self-righteous operative who runs Americans for Tax Reform, which argues that it really will not put up with a single tax increase for anybody (particularly for the wealthy who subsidize his lobby).
How big of an operative? For the 2012 election he managed to have 238 of the 242 House Republicans and 41 of 47 R's in the Senate who signed up. Even the non-congressional sheep like Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed his stupid handiwork. (It will soon become overwhelmingly obvious that Kasich is already running for reelection and doesn't need the distraction of a Tea Party candidate in the Republican primary, even if the Secretary of State Jon Husted is hungry for the job.) .
Norquist's only inducement was the threat that if they turned him down he would field a Tea Party candidate against them in the mid-term elections. Notice that none of the defectors turned up before the November election.
But don't count on Grover giving up his livelihood that easily. He was back on Meet the Press on Sunday for damage control , defiantly boasting that if the president leads America over the fiscal cliff, there will be a second Tea Party that will "dwarf Tea Party One" that will seek unmerciful revenge against the taxers. Nobody knows that more than Speaker John Boehner, who will be back on the biennial ballot. He is currently acting like the captain of Norquist's ship, the last mortal to abandon it when the sea slaps across the deck.
Imagine that: A non-elected lobbyist is presiding over a majority of Republican congressmen to set policy for the entire country. A former newspaper colleague used to refer to him as the "101st senator" because of his extraordinary influence over the elected ones. But as Tea Party One failed to prevent Obama Two, will Grover's Tea Party Two be any more effective against the defectors?
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I have always thought an enterprising lawyer could come up with a plausible treason argument against those who swear fealty to grover.
Grover and his small army of congressional adherents, in clinging to their anti-tax theology, are aspiring to far more than a simple strangle-hold over any rise in taxes. Their end-game is to reduce the federal government to a penniless hulk, capable at most of maintaining a large military complex. They would strip the government of any effective oversight of the financial services industry, prevent effective regulation of the energy and chemical combines that spew toxic materials into the earth-air-water, beggar education and vocational training support to the young and unemployed, impose upon states and localities the costs of rebuilding crumbling infrastructure, and promote the privatization of income-security (Social Security) and health-care (Medicare and Medicaid) programs. That's just for starters. A wise, veteran newspaperman once cautioned me, as I set forth on an investigative newspaper career, to "follow the money." It's not hard to track Grover's sources of cash. Most of it gushes from the private and corporate moguls whose own riches derive from the giant banks, industries and trade associations that stand to benefit from a weak, diminished and revenue-starved government.
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