Hey everybody. This is one of my periodic diaries to remind you all of Grover Norquists humiliating prediction in September of 2004 that "The Democratic Party is Toast". This time, updated with a story from Slate.com called, "RIP GOP?".
America, and democracies generally, are divided not in two but in four; a radical right and a radical left, and a conservative center and a progressive center. The conservative center straddles both parties but has been drown out on the GOP side; the progressive center still has a fighting presence in the Democratic Party but has completely shouldered out the radical left. The radical right has dominated the GOP since the nomination of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Noted moron Grover Norquist is the head of "Americans for Tax Reform", a radical right (not conservative) think tank that subscribes to the economic snake-handling that has roots in the cult of Ayn Rand and the Chicago School, and has infected the political mainstream by allying itself with traditional conservatism. Norquist famously said he wanted to drown government in a bathtub, and believes (or rather "believes") that you could actually have a society where everybody provided for their own security by having a gun, provided for their own health care with a health savings account, provided for their own education through home-schooling, provided for their own retirement through IRAs, and provided for their own livelihood by owning a small business.
To believe such a state is possible is equal in utopian naivete as the more orthodox Marxists who actually believe human nature would just dissolve if social relations were ordered properly. In other words, Norquist is no less radical than any member of the Revolutionary Communist Party: the only different is his philosophy benefits the status quo (for the time being) and particularly the very wealthy. So he gets funding and respect from the corporate media, whereas the RCP, obviously, does not.
Anyway, Norquist wrote this in September in 2004:
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.
The modern Democratic Party is the party of government. Its growth is the health of the state--and vice versa. Over time, all the party's building blocks are dependent on continuous support and reinforcement by the power of the central government. Trial lawyer money is now a major part of the Democratic Party, but it is wholly dependent on legislators and courts maintaining the present tort laws that allow lawyers to interject themselves into any and all contracts and relationships.
They siphon off some $240 billion a year--$40 billion of which stays with a few thousand lawyers. Labor unions, once the godfather of the Democratic Party but now displaced by the richer and more photogenic trial lawyers, cannot maintain their $8 billion in compulsory union dues without the laws that make such payments mandatory. Both wings of the dependency movement--those locked into welfare dependency and the bureaucrats who get paid well to manage others' dependency (and make sure none of them get jobs and become Republicans) are wholly dependent on legislators halting further welfare reform. Big city political machines thrive on federal grants and state-granted powers. And the coercive utopians--the radical environmentalists, animal-rights activists, feminists, and others who would use state power to force on us tiny non-flushable toilets and cars too small to hold families, take away the circus and our pet cats, and otherwise impose more fussbudget impositions on our lives than Leviticus--all depend on government grants to use and misuse federal and state power.
My favorite part is "no brag, just fact." Grovie has a problem with facts.
Anyway, I don't think that the GOP will actually "die", I am posting elements of this Slate piece just to illustrate that almost exactly four years since Grovie shared with us his non-brag fact that the Democratic Party is "toast", respected journalists are writing this:
The central con of the political coalition assembled by Ronald Reagan and maintained by his successors was that government was a common enemy. Middle-class social conservatives loathed the government for legalizing abortion, forbidding prayer in schools, and coddling minorities through welfare and affirmative action. Upper-class libertarian conservatives loathed the government for soaking the rich through the income tax and weakening businesses through burdensome regulation. The only useful function of the federal government was to provide for the common defense. This was a con for two reasons. First, the middle and upper classes were both dependent on the federal government for a variety of benefits, including Social Security, trade protection, scientific research, and assorted localized spending (termed "pork barrel" by those who don't receive it and "economic development" by those who do). Second, the distribution of this government largesse greatly favored the rich. In the April 1992 Atlantic, Neil Howe and Philip Longman, citing unpublished data from the Congressional Budget Office, reported that U.S. households with incomes above $100,000 received, on average, slightly more in federal cash and in-kind benefits ($5,690) than households with incomes below $10,000 ($5,560). This was four years before the Clinton administration eliminated Aid to Families With Dependent Children, the principal income-support program for the poor. When tax breaks were added to the tally, households with incomes above $100,000 received considerably more ($9,280) than households with incomes below $10,000 ($5,690). Clinton subsequently expanded tax subsidies to the poor through the Earned Income Tax Credit, but not enough to undo this disparity. "[I]f the federal government wanted to flatten the nation's income distribution," Howe and Longman concluded, "it would do better to mail all its checks to random addresses."
Gggahahahahahahahahahah mu mu mu mu hahahahahahahah ha ahahahahhahaha.
Anyway, send Grover an email with a link to this diary, or just reminding him of his non-brag "fact". Be sure to include many insults to his intelligence and reminders that his bankrupt philosophy is the target of hundreds of millions of Americans because he is now, and has always been, a milquetoast, doughy intellectual with no stomach for a fight and no head for theory.
I don't have Grovie's email address, but try one of these:
grover@atr.org
gnorquist@atr.org
norquist@atr.org
Here's a sample email:
Dear Grover (by the way, nice name Grover),
Hey, I thought the Democratic Party was toast? Remember, they're "toast." Because you and Karl Rove are so smart and can create your own reality, remember?
What happened Grovie? I get to call you Grovie.
you're a failure in everything you've undertaken,
chicagolife