Friday, July 01, 2011

How Grover Norquist hypnotized the GOP

At our 25th college reunion in 2003, Grover Norquist — the brain and able spokesman for the radical right — and I, along with other classmates who had been in public or political life, participated in a lively panel discussion about politics. During his presentation, Norquist explained why he believed that there would be a permanent Republican majority in America.

One person interrupted, as I recall, and said, “C’mon, Grover, surely one day a Democrat will win the White House.”

Norquist immediately replied: “We will make it so that a Democrat cannot govern as a Democrat.”

In a way, Republicans have accomplished that. This spring, in an effort to reduce the deficit, a Democratic president proposed to cut $2 trillion in spending, much of it from domestic programs Democrats have long championed. Last week, Republican leaders withdrew from talks with the vice president on a bipartisan plan to reduce the deficit because, as another part of the solution and like every bipartisan budget deal for decades, the president proposed to raise revenue. Specifically, he proposed to raise $1 in new revenue (through closing loopholes or ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans) for every $2 in spending cuts. In response to that modest proposal, Republican leaders walked out.

It is now clear that the Republican strategy is to drive America to the brink of fiscal ruin and then argue that the only way out is to cut spending for the powerless. Taxes — a dirty word thanks to Norquist’s “no new taxes” gimmick — are made to seem beyond the pale, even as the burden of paying for our society shifts disproportionately to the middle class and working poor. It is the height of fiscal folly. It is also not who we are as a country.

For nearly a decade, our federal government paid for two wars and a costly prescription drug benefit with borrowed money. Our government paid for the Bush tax cuts with borrowed money. Now, after exhausting the budget surplus left by the Clinton administration, the only spending Republicans are willing to discuss cutting is spending that helps the poor and vulnerable — meaning anything that does not touch the interests of large corporations and the very rich. Last December, Republican hard-liners held hostage benefits for people out of work in exchange for an agreement to extend the Bush tax cuts for those who make a million dollars or more a year. Last month, many of the same lawmakers rallied to protect special tax benefits for oil companies that have made record profits on high gas prices.
Read the rest here.

4 comments:

mjl said...

Some good observations, all in all, even if I might disagree with a good portion of this. However, I was shocked to see that this was written by Deval Patrick, whom I normally regard as being too incompetent to run a hot dog stand.

sjgmore said...

It's becoming increasingly apparent that it really has nothing to do with party labels. Both parties have been irredeemably hijacked by people looking to preserve the status quo. The struggle in governance is no longer between Republicans and Democrats, but between authoritarians and libertarians (broadly defined).

And I'm convinced that part of the struggle is carried out by people like the writer of this article pretending that somehow the struggle is actually between Republicans and Democrats. That way anyone who suggests systemic change is written of as a "gadfly" or a "radical" or as "fringe" or as "kooky"... and it's always the authoritarian "center" who always wins, Democrat and Republican alike.

Anonymous said...

No doubt the GOP shares responsibility for bringing the country to its precarious current postion. Aside from that...seriously???

It is now clear that the Republican strategy is to drive America to the brink of fiscal ruin and then argue that the only way out is to cut spending for the powerless.

It is quite humorous that a ranking party operative (given that he is a State Govenor) might say about a rather minor operative in the opposition, especially given the load of hooey the head of his party (that being the sitting POTUS) sold the voters in 2008. Talk about hypnotizing people...sheesh!

Nikolaus

David Garner said...

sjgmore, I've had that discussion with my brother (a rather hyper-partisan Democrat) on many occasions. He's convinced Republicans are the problem. I'm convinced President Obama is the most recent "neocon," except Democrats won't call him that because the word is devoid of meaning and reserved as a pejorative to describe basically all Republicans.

In any event, I think the country could use a healthy dose of real radicalism from both the right and left. If socialists and libertarians were having a real discussion about how to fix our problems, some actual ideas might come forth. As it stands, the status quo is the only thing that ever "progresses."