Breaking Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge
By Eugene
Robinson,
“Maybe the fever is breaking. Maybe
the delirium is lifting. Maybe Republicans are finally asking themselves: What were we thinking when
we put an absurdly unrealistic pledge to a Washington lobbyist ahead of our
duty to the American people?
“I said maybe. So far, the
renunciations of Grover Norquist’s “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” amount to a trickle, not a flood. But we’re seeing the first signs in years that on
the question of taxation — one of the fundamental responsibilities of
government — the GOP may be starting to recover its senses…”
Breaking up with Grover Norquist
“Sen. Lindsey Graham. Sen. Bob Corker. Sen. Saxby Chambliss. Rep. Peter King. All wavering in their commitment to Sparkle Motion — er, I’m sorry, to the famed NorquistAmericans for Tax Reform no-tax pledge.
Are
these great trees, falling in isolation? The Fix seems to think so. Or are they dominoes, starting a slide?
“One thing’s for sure: I haven’t
seen this many people inching away from the pledge since one really dire
afternoon in the Temperance Movement
“The hardest part of breaking up can
be figuring out the words. Do you use words? Maybe he’ll take the hint if you
stop calling and, eight years later, show up married to someone else. That
seems direct. Or maybe you could just leave the country…”
“For everyone
else, there are break-up lines. Here are a few that might be appropriate to the
situation with Grover:
““It's
not you. It’s means..."
Cassi Creek: Excluding
Gerald Ford’s pardons and amnesty for draft resistors, this is the first bit of
sanity that I’ve heard emanating from the GOP ranks since Nixon was elected. There is no excuse that justifies Congress
handing over control of our national fiscal policy to a lobbyist who is only
too eager to hand over that control to the super wealthy men who have spent
billions trying to maintain their status quo with respect to taxes.
I had a high
school classmate who was fond of coming up with plans to defund the
government. He claimed that government
would destroy the United States prior to the year 2000 unless the Medicare and
the Civil Rights laws were repealed. He
was the offspring of Polish refugees who had made their way to the U.S. His parents were rabid anti-communists, and
he had been infected with an unhealthy dose of anti-government sentiment by the
time I met him.
It always
amused me that his family took full advantage of the government programs that
helped them reach and resettle in the U.S.
They sent their children to the public schools rather than paying for
them to attend Catholic schools. They were
certainly not alone in their fear of the USSR.
They probably couldn’t have been resettled in a more reactionary region
of the country. My friend thought that
the local Bircher militia affiliate was comprised of uncommonly patriotic
men. That none of them was willing to
put on the nation’s uniform, that they had all found some mechanism to avoid
military service, never seemed to cross his mind.
He would have
been fully on board the Norquist lobbying establishment. He planned to study political science at some
land grant college before becoming a cog in the GOP machine. I wonder which lobbying firm finally scooped
him up.
No comments:
Post a Comment