Grover Norquist in November 9, 2006
LA Times article:
Grover Norquist said in an interview that he viewed the election as a bump on an otherwise smooth road to continued conservative dominance...
"In two years, there is no George W. Bush and almost no Iraq war as presently constructed," Norquist said.
"And Democrats will be standing there, naked to the winds, having been forced by Nancy Pelosi to vote for tax increases, gun control and impeaching the president," he added, referring to the future speaker of the House.
The neocons just don't get it. This is the man who recently was singing the praises of Bush/Cheney and their infallibility. Bush was leading the Republicans to the promise land of permanent Republican rule.
If I sound like I am gloating it is only because of the tone of Norquists earlier gem of a piece, a prediction titled, "
The Democratic Party is Toast". I'm sure inaccurate and shrill essays like this September 2004 one are a dime a dozen from him but this one has a bunch of predicitions and assertions that I am glad to bring back to his attention.
The modern Democratic Party cannot survive the reelection of President George W. Bush and another four years of Republican control of both Congress and the White House.
No brag. Just fact.
...
Without effective control of the government, the Democratic Party is like a fish out of water, a vampire in the sun, Antaeus held aloft, an appliance unplugged. In the past, the Democratic Party could afford to lose the presidency and remain connected to its source of power--the state--through control of the House of Representatives, and often the Senate as well. Little damage was done to the structure of the Democratic Party during the interregnums of the Eisenhower, Nixon, and George H.W. Bush administrations, because their moves could be checkmated by a Democratic Congress.
His disdain for the American government and process is shocking. His prose is so outlandishly excessive because he can't come right out and say that he hates 60% of Americans and doesn't want us to have any say in government.
Redistricting in Texas and throughout the country ensures that Republicans will continue to control the House through 2012. Over time, the Senate--thanks to those wonderful square states out west--will trend toward 60 Republicans as the 30 red states elect Republicans and the 20 blue states elect Democrats. The anomaly of four Democratic senators hailing from Republican North and South Dakota will come to an end, as will the Republican-held Senate seat in Rhode Island.
Ok...the Rhode Island thing was right. Score one for Grover for the Democrats winning back that seat. The other predictions are based on the faulty prediction that the "Fire up the base" strategy is sustainable. The loose confederation of groups that made up the GOP base wasn't able to absorb the incompetence and corruption the GOP usually made them swallow. Not to mention alienating the middle voters which the Democrats took overwhelmingly. All your base are belong to us, Grover.
Now that we have leverage the public image of the Democratic Party will change dramatically and the GOP will only be seen as even more corrupt than possibly imagined. I think that is something Grover was fearing back in 2004.
With Democrats lacking a beachhead in Congress, four more years of Republican governance with President Bush in the White House will badly damage each of the pillars of the Democrat establishment...
Abroad, four more years under President Bush will move America and the world towards greater free trade, spreading prosperity throughout the world and bringing more countries into the trading systems that require property rights and rule of law, draining the swamps that breed radicalism and terror. At home, a second Bush administration will permanently abolish the death tax, which not only threatens to confiscate up to half of your parents' lifetime earnings, but also leads to the creation of Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford Foundations that inevitably are taken over by liberal bureaucrats. And a steady increase in the number of honest gun owners will continue to reduce street crime and make America safer...
Over the next four years, Congress will bring such sanity to Washington, D.C., and expand the number of Americans who can carry across state lines. Less crime means fewer prison guards and parole officers, shrinking the government workforce which tends to be 10 percent more Democrat and less Republican. Solving problems without hiring a lot of government workers is a virtuous cycle...
We'll also be able to shrink the number of government workers already on the payroll. Over the next few years, a high number of middle managers in federal and state governments will become eligible for retirement, allowing government at all levels to reduce the middle management bloat that the private sector shed in the 1980s--but through painless attrition rather than bitter mass layoffs. This will save taxpayers billions and make government more competent and accountable.
First of all, Iraq needs much more than a stock market to trade. His false belief in the god of wealth to create an upper class for him to be able to deal with is part of the reason Iraq is the way it is. People like Grover preach from the Bible of Free Trade expecting that to solve all our problems and people involved in the Iraq reconstruction believed it.
As for the repeal of gun restrictions, according to the Brady Campaign to Stop Gun Violence: "Among 26 industrialized nations, 86% of gun deaths among children under age 15 occurred in the United States...Taxpayers pay more than 85% of the medical cost for treatment of firearm-related injuries...From 1977 to 1996, the U.S. firearm industry produced 85,644,715 firearms, 39,024,786 handguns, 26,651,062 rifles and 19,969,867 shotguns in the United States." Not such a stellar record to advocate for less gun control.
And of course while lavishing praises on Bush, who oversaw the biggest increase of government in history followed closely by Reagan, he still has the audacity to claim that only Democrats want bigger government. There are so many false and erroneous statements made by him that I could be here all day nitpicking every wrong assumption but we need to move on.
Bush wants to create Retirement Savings Accounts to allow every American to sock away up to $5,000 for retirement tax-free...
Four more years of more and bigger individual retirement accounts, heath savings accounts, RSAs, and LSAs means four more years of more Republicans and fewer Democrats.
Too bad, Americans don't trust this scheme and rather than have this issue create "more years of more Republicans", Bush's heavy stance on this issue is what started turning the tide against him. In short, this issue convinced more people to vote Democrat.
Last, a Bush-Cheney victory in November will create the conditions for a constructive contest among leading Republican governors and senators for the presidential nomination in 2008.
Wrong.
Dick Cheney's heart troubles mean that he will retire with Bush in 2009. Usually the sitting vice president is the natural enemy of all ambitious politicians of his party, but now all Republicans want a Bush-Cheney victory in 2004, so they can run for an open presidential ticket in 2008.
This is good for the Republicans, if not the republic.
Tell that to Santorum, Allen, Sweeney, Burns, Talent, Chafee, along with all the incumbents who lost and any Republican candidate looking at '08 hoping to crawl out of the terrible slump the neocons dragged them into.
Grover Norquist is a leading Conservative thinker.