Finding the Warrior Spirit - From the Gadfly

The conservative network has its roots in the wreckage of the 1964 Goldwater campaign, but its clearest manifestation is found today in the meeting held every Wednesday in the offices of Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform. Among the hundred or so people who attend are Capitol Hill staffers, reporters from the conservative press, Republican lobbyists, conservative activists, and GOP consultants. The meetings are an opportunity to share information, plot strategy, and coordinate the conservative message. George W. Bush started sending representatives to the Wednesday meetings before he even announced his candidacy for the presidency, and White House aides continue to attend. As Norquist said in early 2001, "There isn't an us and them with this administration. They is us. We is them."

Finding the warrior spirit

What progressives should learn from Norquist isn't just the power of organization and coordination, as important as they are. Rather, it's the warrior spirit that animates Norquist and his allies. As Newt Gingrich told the conservative Heritage Foundation back in 1988, "This war [between liberals and conservatives] has to be fought with the scale and duration and savagery that is only true of civil wars." After George W. Bush took office in 2001, Norquist told the crowd at a Republican fundraiser, "The Democrats are the Lefties, the takers, the coercive utopians...They are not stupid, they are evil. Evil!"

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