Grover Norquist should be a little fish in an ornamental pond. But he isn't. He's a very big fish in the Republican's ornamental lake and he wields considerable power, particularly over those in Congress. He speaks; they jump.
So I dug around into Norquist's background to see if I could find out why. After all, he's not a billionaire donor like the Kochs; he doesn't run Heritage Action; he's never held elected office and he doesn't work on Wall Street. So what is it that he has over the Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, which renders them so compliant to his demands?
He has links to Reagan and was credited as being the key to Bush II’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns. He is active in tea party politics yet has a powerful hold over establishment Republicans. From his position as founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform, he called upon all GOP members to sign the "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" and succeeded in securing the signatures of 95% of all Republican members of Congress by 2012. Better yet, he has held them fast to that pledge. That’s some power.
It’s hard to pin down just where this power is anchored. It may be in the complex web of influential contacts he's amassed over the years and the success of the regular meetings he set up for conservatives in 48 states. The concept was based on his Wednesday meetings in Washington (which Ted Cruz is successfully modelling with his regular “fellowship” meetings) with the goal of creating a nationwide network of conservative activists that he can call upon to support conservative causes, such as tax cuts and deregulation.
But the lynch pin of his power may well be in another organization altogether – Norquist sits as a director on the Board of the NRA. That alone would be enough to scare Congressional Republicans rigid into signing anything he put in front of them and to follow his directives
On December 30, 2014, Norquist became headline news for a day. I read the article in Huff Post, scoffed a good deal, thought about diarying it but then let it go. After all, the week between Christmas and New Year has very slim pickings for political writers so they were probably delighted to pat the publicity-seeking Norquist on the head, take copious notes and hype it into a front page story. Had I then had a better understanding of Norquist's power, I wouldn't have been so dismissive.
From the Huff Post article:
WASHINGTON -- Grover Norquist would like Republicans to shut up about how bad the economy is, and instead take credit for the recovery.
Apparently he’s recently been in contact with some disgruntled Congresscritters who are blaming their leaders for screwing up a potential tie-in of sequester spending cuts and the continuation of 85% of the tax cuts (crafted by Norquist for Bush II) with the economic recovery. Norquist blamed “outside voices” who were advising Republicans on what to do. Apparently he’s the cavalry come to save them in the nick of time from the plaintive and repetitive narrative that the economic recovery is suffering long term deficit and debts because of the President’s “job-killing” regulations.
But as writers Stein and Delaney pointed out:
Norquist himself has dabbled in this rhetoric. He predicted that Obamacare would encourage companies to send jobs overseas (the worst of this is yet to come, he now says, pointing to delays in several of the law's penalties). And though he eventually praised the Bush tax cut deal crafted after the 2012 elections, his journey to that point was, well, difficult to follow. At one point, he floated the idea of a tax-cut showdown that would result in impeachment.
Because of this, Republicans have probably concluded that a pivot like the one Norquist now envisions may be simply too hard to execute. Still, he wants members to try.
It seemed laughable on the face of it until I read Chris Weigant's first blog post of the year,
Claiming Credit, posted January 5. I have a great deal of respect for Weigant's clear perception of national politics and his sometimes uncanny prescience. He wrote:
Democrats should really join in a loud chorus right now to help Obama achieve the first of those goals -- claiming credit for turning the American economy around. This is important for two reasons. The first is that Democrats (and Obama), up until now, have been too timid to claim much of any credit for the economy, out of fears that it could take a turn for the worse and they'd end up looking like Pollyannas (Obama already got his fingers burnt on this previously, with the supposed summer of "green shoots," quite a while back). The second reason it behooves Democrats to claim some credit right now is that if they don't, Republicans are already chomping at the bit to claim all that credit for themselves.
In the final paragraphs, was this timely warning for Democrats:
Republicans are itching to claim all this credit for themselves. They're already floating the line "the economy picked up in anticipation of Republicans running Congress," even though it ignores the previous four or five years. This masterful spin job could actually work -- Republicans are almost never shy about claiming credit for themselves (earned or unearned) for good things that happen. Democrats need to take a page from the Republican playbook, but the window is fast closing on the opportunity to do so.
That window slammed shut on January 6 when Mitch McConnell heeded Norquist’s directive and put out this statement, reported in
The Hill January 7:
“After so many years of sluggish growth, we’re finally starting to see some economic data that can provide a glimmer of hope; the uptick appears to coincide with the biggest political change of the Obama Administration’s long tenure in Washington: the expectation of a new Republican Congress,” he said in a statement, adding that it was “precisely the right time to advance a positive, pro-growth agenda.”
While there was immediate pushback from the Democratic National Committee Communications Director, Mo Elleithee, and White House Senior Adviser, Dan Pfeiffer, it was too little, too late. Democrats should have been trumpeting economic recovery in every campaign before November. They didn't. When the Republicans won the majority in the Senate and an increased majority in the House, Democrats again had a golden opportunity to lay sole claim to an economic recovery that was gaining real momentum. As Chris Weigant noted:
If the economy continues to improve and actually starts booming, Democrats will have already taken credit for fixing the Great Recession. If there's a downturn, then Democrats can make the case that the congressional Republicans screwed up a good thing.
Ah, lost opportunities. Norquist opined that the Republicans had missed opportunities but it's the Democrats who missed the biggest opportunity of all. It doesn't matter that what McConnell & co claim isn't true – when has that ever mattered? Their base will believe it and, in due time, mainstream media will be echoing the new narrative.
The only silver lining is that the Republicans have now shackled themselves to the assertion that the improvement in the economy was in “expectation of a new Republican Congress” which will “advance a positive, pro-growth agenda”. Contrary to the last six years, Republicans can no longer afford to direct all their energy into their privately-avowed objective to tank the economy and blame the President. They have not only taken credit where it isn't due, they have also taken on full responsibility for what happens in the next two years.
The Dow lost 300 points a couple of days ago. Welcome to the oil bust, McConnell and co. We'll be sure to give you full credit for the failure of the fracking industry and every lost job it sheds as the year progresses. I wonder what Grover Norquist's advice will be then?
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