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(photo: Gage Skidmore)
When you have the kind of power Grover Norquist has held — namely, decades of unquestioned dictatorial control over the Republican Party as its grand ayatollah of anti-tax orthodoxy — it’s easy for a wee bit of hubris to creep into your thinking.
The result is the occasional burst of excessive honesty, as exemplified by Norquist’s infamous statement that he’d like to shrink government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub” (which came back to haunt him after hurricane Katrina a few years ago).
Apparently, our friend Grover has had another one of those moments. This is from an interview with Nancy Cook of the National Journal, posted yesterday afternoon:
NJ At the end of 2012, a number of major tax provisions, including the Bush-era cuts, are set to expire. Do you have any predictions?
NORQUIST [...] If the Republicans have the House, Senate, and the presidency, I’m told that they could do an early budget vote—a reconciliation vote where you extend the Bush tax cuts out for a decade or five years. You take all of those issues off the table, and then say, “What do you want to do for tax reform?” … And, if you have a Republican president to go with a Republican House and Senate, then they pass the [Paul] Ryan plan [on Medicare].
NJ What if the Democrats still have control? What’s your scenario then?
NORQUIST Obama can sit there and let all the tax [cuts] lapse, and then the Republicans will have enough votes in the Senate in 2014 to impeach.
Now, to be fair, this claim relies on the nearly delusional fantasy that ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans will cause an intense popular backlash in favor of the Republicans, resulting in 67 GOP senators after the next midterms. But it’s also a reminder of what these guys consider an impeachable offense — and how far they’re willing to take their desire to protect the rich. They play for keeps.
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And until we do, we’re fucked!
He’s probably right. There would be enough fools among the 99% to support the house and senate in such a stupid move.
Swopa!
They play the long game. The modern conservative movement that now dominates the GOP got its start after the failed Goldwater campaign, when his followers began building the institutional infrastructure of think tanks, talk radio, and pundits to spread their message.
I say give them all they want. when the mid west is dry they can eat crow. Your corporation is at the end of the food line.If it’s first your going nowhere. We don’t forget.
x2
Grover Norquist, and those of his sick ilk, are like an incurable cancer, a malignant cyst on our society, slowing killing the patient, our nation.
Grover Norquist is an unimaginable piece of shit…
Yeah, I went ahead and sugar-coated it.
Is letting a law with an expiration date WRITTEN RIGHT INTO IT expire on that expiration date LIKE IT SAYS a high crime or a misdemeanor?
I don’t hate America, so I guess I’ll never understand Republican thinking.
Ironically, it can be argued Obama has committed high crimes and misdemeanors while in office. Sadly for the Republicans, they have tacitly gone along with every single one of them.
And, yes, Your Old Pal Grover is a piece of shit.
Grover Norquist and Frank Luntz are malignancies on the republic.
Herein lies the crux of the dilemma. As bad as the Vichycrats are and as much as I deplore any support for them, they are infinitely preferable to people who bow and scrape to the likes of Norquist and Limbaugh, et al and think that a “high crime and misdemeanor” is letting enormous, sweeping tax cuts for rich people expire. I don’t yet have a solution for this paradox but as horrified as I am at Obama and his cadre of self serving con artists, I am even more terrified of any of the Republican candidates getting into the White House for any reason other than the public tour.
Now, to be fair, this claim relies on the nearly delusional fantasy that ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans will cause an intense popular backlash in favor of the Republicans, resulting in 67 GOP senators after the next midterms
Just how much pull does Grover really have? Even if Obama loses if the GOP runs on tax breaks for the rich those cuts have to be paid for somehow. No GOPer will touch defense spending so that means cuts to red states who get more money from the Feds than they pay the Feds in taxes.
In other words that won’t happen.
So cutting SS and Medicare more becomes the only option…oh wait without angry older White Males who collect SS and Medicare the GOP is dead on election day.
Grover’s scenario is politically impossible for the GOP.
The arrogance is a thing to behold, is it not?
I would have said clueless to GOP political realities I don’t expect the surrender Dems Obama recruits to do anything but the GOP base won’t like this Sarah for example will oppose cuts to Alaska’s tax cuts tooth and nail and she still has the Tea Baggers.
Scarah is about as relevant as a twinky suppository. But Alaska gas aint just farts. Watch out. Tarsands needs gas.
Why, oh,why do we continue to treat Grover Norquist as a human Man, when we know he’s a tapeworm in the bowels of our nation?
The pictures nummy must have of the repubs in congress must truly be something to see. How else could he have such control over these fools.
You’ve got a point there.
Norquist, the King Zombie of all zombies. It says something really bad about our species that even amidst all the wreckage we still allow his like not only to breathe air but to inhabit a position of societal prestige forever.
we like famous
Was that Grover at the GOP debate in South Carolina jumping to his feet to cheer Newt’s blustering response to John King? I caught a few frames in the video on the tube but couldn’t find the same footage online to check frames.
Is Grover supporting Newt?
I don’t think they will need anywhere near 67 GOP senators to impeach, given the likely composition of the Senate in 2015. My guess is that 51 or 52 GOP senators will be quite enough given the actions of most senate ‘democrats’ these days.
I’m sure when the Party of Tards heard that the President put mustard on a hamburger they were ready to begin impeachment hearings but less hydrocephalic heads prevailed and they shelved it.
Not to worry, Obama has his bipartisan voodoo dolls ready wherein he gives the GOP everything they want (like extending the Bush tax cuts when he promised not to do it to get elected) and holds up his voodoo dolls and say…”See what I did to them”.
Of Norquist wants the Bush tax cuts extended and US to run up another $3T in deficits and debt, he should be working hard for Obama, the guy who delivered the extension of the Bush tax cuts.
its not that they “play for keeps”, its their total disregard for the Constitution, the American people, and the country. They are psychotically possessed of greed and power. Exerting their will to enrich themselves is the totality of their miserable existence.
???? That’s not what happens. When the Bush rates expire everybody’s taxes go up. (income tax paying) If you want something else it has to go through the House.
As for impeachment, that would be like the Gov Walker recall, right? Obviously this piece is just another display of gargantuan hypocrisy, brought to us by the fine folks on the left. Tsk.
he needs to be impeached for war crimes and killing american citizens without due process. That should be the article/issue. who cares about Grover?
Tsk? Why are you still hanging out here? The company of those present does not seem to please you, and that has been true for quite awhile.
I would have thought correcting an error of fact, and pointing out an argument’s flaw would be valuable to you. Apparently you would prefer the flock to go on ignorant and partisan. Why is that?
In Wisconsin, public officials can be recalled for any reason. The Constitution says that “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
I’ve never heard of tax increases referred to as “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” before, unless the right has changed its mind about whether “criminalizing policy differences” is now a good thing. Or, if as usual, IOKIYAR.
I will support articles of impeachment if they use the right articles, the same stuff they needed to use against bush
that would be incorrect, bush redistributed middle class assets, gave them to the wealthy and now we are enjoying the fruits of that REDICULOUS policy with service cuts, costing FAR more then any “tax increase” you seem to believe will happen to “everyone”
bush redistribution is what caused this problem, correcting the cause will solve the problem
or did you forget, wealth begins from THE BOTTOM, not from the top, unless of course you believe the rain feeds feeds the ocean.
man it gets hard correcting you all the time and I do have to get to work so I guess you’re going to make some uninformed claim to respond…
to tiresome shooter, too tiresome
I keep hearing the word “sedition” in my poor abused mind. I Grover a seditionist? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition. I would like to think this guy is an enemy of the state. He is holding his pledge over the heads of those who signed it as a way to leverage these politicians to ignore their oaths of office. Is it sedition?
Once again I am compelled to ask why President Obama thought he could do business with that pack of jackals. Any reasonably observant person with rudimentary reasoning skills could have figured out years ago that the Republicans aren’t interested in compromise; they want to run their opponents off the face of the Earth.
The odd thing is that these people are playing a long game to protect a short game.
It seems to me that the primary goal here is unfettered access to the ability to make huge, short term profits and damn the consequences to those that are injured.
If these corporations took a longer view of making profits and settled for less immediate money over a longer period of time, they would actually be richer down the road… but they don’t want to let go of the illusion that they are in control.
As for sedition, I believe that it is unconstitutional, and should be illegal, to have public servants swear any type of allegiance except to the American people. I see Norquist’s signed pledge as a legitimate attempt to subvert a government meant to be ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’. A public servant’s oath should be to support and defend the constitution, thereby serving the interests of the people, not a person. Period.
sedition is unlawful overthrow of the Govt.
Norquist isn’t being unlawful. It’s called the first amendment.
When has the GOP ever even considered making up* for their tax cuts?
(I’m on a crusade, by the way, to replace the term “paying for tax cuts” with “making up for tax cuts.” “Paying” for tax cuts is a weird term that the Republicans jump all over, and rightly so. You don’t “pay for” a tax cut any more than you “pay for” taking a lower-paying job voluntarily or involuntarily; you make up for it. Thanks.)
Wealth starts from the bottom? Then why isn’t Somalia rich? I’ll tell you why…
Labor is a group of people standing around with nothing to do until someone arrives with an idea and the money to pursue it. You don’t have to believe me, you can see this demonstrated every day at day-labor street corners.
As for the Bush tax cuts, it made the tax brackets more progressive not less. Let’s assume for the moment you already knew that… the most common complaint is that the rich got to keep too much extra money, yes?
That’s addressed in the dinner story, a parable even liberals can understand.
http://www.snopes.com/business/taxes/howtaxes.asp
Injured? Who is injured?
…..their desire to protect the rich. They play for keeps.
More precisely; they play for stupid.
And what do you do with cancers? You cut them out and remove them before they kill you. We need to keep that in mind.
The sad part is that most of the people on this site would be happy to see the current president impeached. That’s the level of delusion going on here.