So we hit the debt limit...

[grumbler]

So... raising taxes = more jobs? 

Probably.  Revenue, plus cutting spending.  That's what the Republicans concluded last year.  This year, they seem to be concluding that last year's Republicans were morons.

Also, I like how you played the patriotism card there.  So anyone who disagrees with you on economic policy is unpatriotic?

It is called the "bullshit rhetoric" card, and yes, I deliberately played it and, yes, it was bullshit.  The difference between your bullshit rhetoric and mine is that I admit when my rhetoric is bullshit. 

[CountDeMoney]

and Cantor pulled an Arafat.

A brilliant analogy.  Kudos to you, sir.

[Razgovory]

Exactly. The notion of these Tea Baggers running around waving the American flag when their ideological stubborness and political gamesmanship are destroying their economy , would be laughable, if it was funny.

Honest question: do you hold the Dems and Obama responsible for their stubbornness?

Why would anyone do that?  The Dems are not threatening to destroy the economy.  All responsibility is for the hostage takers, not the negotiators.

[Jacob]

I gotta say that if Admiral Yi and OvB are saying the Republicans have gone too far, then the Republicans are getting out on deep water.

Yi and OvB, how does this have to play out for each of the following scenarios:

1) You say "fucking hell, that's outlandish guys; I'll have to vote Democrat for a while until you get your damn senses back."

2) You say "okay, that's pretty damn stupid; that's a serious mark against the Republican party, but you might still look better compared to the Democrats down the road on this and other issues. My vote is up for grabs in a way it hasn't been before."

3) You say "yeah, some of that was pretty dumb guys but in the end you're still more sensible than the Democrats. I'm still voting Republican, but try to chill out a bit."

[OttoVonBismarck]

What's really frustrating is I feel we could have had a "win" if we had taken a $4tn deal with cuts to sacred cow entitlement programs. Those are the sort of things that could have seriously altered the next 15-30 years in a positive way, and that are very, very difficult to ever get Democrats to go along with. Read: it has never really happened before, even the Clinton welfare reforms weren't touching the famed third rail of American politics.

All we were giving up was a roll back of some of the Bush tax cuts on top earners and possibly a 5% increase in the capital gains tax or something. Fuck, we're still out ahead versus the year 2000, because most of the Bush tax cuts will have persisted and we would have slashed entitlement spending. And a few years down the road if things looked better, it would not be difficult to undo those tax increases if the economy really picks up and it becomes fiscally feasible--tax cuts are always easy to get through.

[Razgovory]

Why are you guys so obsessed with tax cuts anyway?

[Fate]

Why are you guys so obsessed with tax cuts anyway?

Does that really need to be asked? I wanna get paid, bitch.

[Jacob]

What's really frustrating is I feel we could have had a "win" if we had taken a $4tn deal with cuts to sacred cow entitlement programs. Those are the sort of things that could have seriously altered the next 15-30 years in a positive way, and that are very, very difficult to ever get Democrats to go along with. Read: it has never really happened before, even the Clinton welfare reforms weren't touching the famed third rail of American politics.

All we were giving up was a roll back of some of the Bush tax cuts on top earners and possibly a 5% increase in the capital gains tax or something. Fuck, we're still out ahead versus the year 2000, because most of the Bush tax cuts will have persisted and we would have slashed entitlement spending. And a few years down the road if things looked better, it would not be difficult to undo those tax increases if the economy really picks up and it becomes fiscally feasible--tax cuts are always easy to get through.

I'm curious: how much do you think Obama and his economic team might think that trimming entitlements is a good idea and are using the Republican hard line as cover with their own base?

[Admiral Yi]

What Biscuit said more or less.  Obama offered the Republicans 93% of the West Bank and Gaza and they told him to fuck off.  It would be different if the zero tax kooks were only a wing of the party and I could point at amazing centrist Republicans who were the true Republicans, but there's only 6 GOP members of the House that haven't signed the Norquist no increase pledge.

[DGuller]

Why do politicians let some fanatic control their actions?  What's to stop all the Congressmen from collectively reneging on that pledge?  What's he going to do, campaign against every single one of them?

[CountDeMoney]

Why do politicians let some fanatic control their actions?  What's to stop all the Congressmen from collectively reneging on that pledge?  What's he going to do, campaign against every single one of them?

Grover Norquist, the anti-tax enforcer behind the scenes of the debt debate
By Jason Horowitz, Published: July 12, WashingtonPost.com

The sacred texts from which Grover Norquist draws his political power are hidden in a secret fireproof safe.

"I keep the originals in a vault, in case D.C. burns down," said Norquist, referring to the pledge that his organization asks politicians to sign, vowing to "oppose any and all efforts" to raise taxes. "When someone takes the pledge, you don't want it tampered with; you don't want it destroyed."

For more than two decades, signing Norquist's pledge has been an almost religious rite of passage for Washington Republicans.

The 54-year-old president of Americans for Tax Reform is Washington's anti-tax doctrinal watchdog, his stature derived from the faith of his Republican signatories. He is using all of his authority to prevent GOP leaders from giving an inch on taxes as President Obama and congressional leaders seek a historic compromise to raise the debt ceiling and bring down the deficit.

Since he first collected the signatures of Jack Kemp, Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich 25 years ago, Norquist has prepared for this very clash, enlisting about 95 percent of the Republican members of Congress in the crusade against tax increases. Along the way, he has become one of Washington's most visible and idiosyncratic characters: a zealous, self-promoting tax scourge who presides over a weekly meeting of conservative power brokers and dabbles in stand-up comedy.

On Monday afternoon, as Republican congressional leaders again refused Obama's entreaty to raise taxes on the wealthy to restrain the nation's ballooning debt, Norquist, sporting glasses and a closely cropped graying beard, sat at his desk in his 12th Street offices, describing the pledge as a "self-enforcing" and "powerful" tool.

He said it is an immutable covenant with voters, regardless of the mundane demands of govern­ance, one so serious it must be co-signed by two witnesses. As he meticulously folded sheets of newspaper, adjusted business cards, repositioned scissors and laid down a stress ball next to a pair of hand grips, Norquist acknowledged issuing gentle reminders to pledge-takers.

He has, he said, been in e-mail contact "on a regular basis" with "leadership and leadership staff" during the debt talks, "just to check in to see if there was anything they needed from me." When he read in the news that House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), a pledge-taker, was apparently considering a compromise, he simply dropped him a note asking, "What did you say?"

Norquist said he has also been in frequent touch with the Republican presidential candidates, who have emerged as a solid bloc against a compromise. Copies of their pledges — with the exception of holdout Jon Huntsman Jr. — are kept in a black binder on the desk of one his interns.

"I talk with [Mitt] Romney directly," Norquist said. He mentioned that Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) will be attending his Wednesday meeting this week and that Gingrich recently sent him an unsolicited statement strongly opposing backing down in the debt talks. For Norquist, any other position would be unacceptable.

"This is team ball," he said of the pledge-signing presidential candidates. "When somebody seems to be off, first you call them, then you write them, then you have an argument with them. And nobody running for president has done anything that has made me want to call them on the phone and say, 'Did you say that?' "

The stakes for the anti-tax orthodoxy have never been higher, he argued. "If the entire Republican Party decides, 'Okay, this once we'll trade a tax increase for something,' then the pledge would be meaningless," he said, discounting the suggestion that such a break would dilute his own power. Instead, he calmly predicted that the White House will give in on spending because Boehner and the GOP congressional leadership are "in line."

"The speaker has never voted for a tax hike, and he never will," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner. "Like Mr. Norquist, he has always fought for lower taxes, and a smaller, less costly government in Washington."

A very personal library

Norquist likes reading about himself. In his headquarters' library, opposite the 100-plus copies of his own book ("Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government's Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives"), are shelves reserved for tomes in which he is quoted. A hallway is lined with framed newspaper and magazine stories about him. One is in Japanese. In his executive office, decorated with a green lava lamp, a Janis Joplin poster ("a high point of Western civilization," he said) and stuffed "Sesame Street" Grover dolls, another floor-to-ceiling bookcase holds titles including a 1994 comic book called "Taxpayers' Tea Party" in which he is depicted. He plucked a copy of Ralph Nader's "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us" out of the stacks, because, he said, "I'm a major character in it." The green tags on the pages, he explained, mark every time his persona appears.

Norquist is also a frequent and combative presence on television. As he offered a tour of his office, he asked his communications director to confirm an in-studio radio interview at 10 p.m. with Jim Bohannon.

His hunger for the spotlight extends to less likely stages, as well. Last year, his political and family humor earned him third place behind White House speechwriter Jon Lovett and Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.) in the "D.C.'s Funniest Celebrities" contest. He said he specialized in Steven Wright-style one-liners. ("When midgets play miniature golf, do they know?" he deadpanned.)

Norquist is better known for more controversial lines, such as saying he wants to shrink government enough so that he can "drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." Being willing to speak in absolutist, brook-no-dissent sound bites has made him extremely valuable to political media built around conflict.

And all that attention is highly valuable to Norquist, who depends on the media to magnify the fate of pledge-breakers. For instance, when President George H.W. Bush lost in 1992 to Bill Clinton after breaking his "read my lips" vow not to raise taxes, "I didn't have to buy ads — CBS, NBC and ABC told everybody," Norquist said.

However much he likes to describe himself as a man of peace, letting the pledges work their own magic, his organization has sometimes taken matters into its own hands. His office prominently features posters, once displayed in Metro stations, targeting Republicans who refused to take the pledge. "There are times," he boasted, "when we'll call everybody in the congressional district and let them know that one guy signed the pledge and one guy didn't."

Last month, Norquist's hold on Republicans seemed to slip when he faced an insurgency from conservative Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.), who led 34 of 47 Senate Republicans in a vote to reduce the deficit by eliminating $6 billion in ethanol subsidies. Norquist, who is opposed to government support for ethanol but more opposed to any whiff of a tax increase, spoke of the eventual defeat of the bill, which he considered a test run for the current negotiations, in triumphant terms.

"We had Coburn boxed in, and we beat him," he said, explaining that the failure of the challenge was important "because if Coburn is trying to make the case that it's okay to raise taxes, that might confuse some people about the nature of the world."

Norquist has sought to restore his preferred world order. He said he "inoculated" all the Republicans in Congress against the compromise virus and "cauterized" Coburn's bipartisan Gang of Six from expanding. "We talked to everybody who might have been tempted to join that group," he said. And then he declared war on Coburn.

Coburn argued that Norquist has his own interests at heart.

"What's more conservative? To fix the country and not let it go bankrupt, or to follow a pledge to Grover Norquist?" asked Coburn, who is not running for reelection in 2016 and described Norquist as a well-paid lobbyist. "We cannot allow one individual to have that kind of power over a vote that can help fix the country."

The senator said Norquist exercises his power by "threatening all these guys here for the first time by saying he'll send mailers, press releases and make it known to their constituents that they aren't conservative." Coburn argued that the support his ethanol measure had from GOP senators was their way of saying: "Grover, you're stupid, forget it, we're going to vote the right way."

Coburn's criticism of Norquist is unusual only in that it comes from an elected Republican. With the exception of remarks by Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who has accused him of "bullying," almost all the barbs are launched by pundits who don't face reelection. The vast majority of the criticism is on the substance of his positions or the control he exercises over most Republicans in Congress. But Norquist said he is also a victim of some anonymous shots that have crossed the line.

"Guys have run around saying I'm gay," said Norquist, who sits on the advisory council of GOProud, a group that represents gay conservatives and their allies. And the anonymous attacks on him for being married to a Palestinian Muslim, the mother of his two children, he said, amount to "a completely different bigotry."

The main event

In January 2009, Norquist moved the Americans for Tax Reform headquarters from Dupont Circle to the old Verizon building downtown. The selling point was a large space on the sixth floor where he could house the sprawling Wednesday meeting, which has become a main event for conservative lawmakers, lobbyists and policy wonks. Rows of sta­dium seating that can accommodate nearly 200 guests surround a large oval table.

"I sit here," Norquist said, his hands on the chair at the table's head.

Norquist has never been bashful. The oldest son of a Polaroid engineer and a nursery school director, he volunteered for Richard Nixon as a 12-year-old. He graduated from Harvard and Harvard Business School. As executive director of the College Republicans, he worked with Jack Abramoff, who was later ensnared in a lobbying scandal, and Ralph Reed, who would go on to lead the Christian Coalition. In 1985, President Ronald Reagan's administration picked Norquist to run Americans for Tax Reform, an outside group funded by individual and corporate donors to help pass a tax overhaul.

Norquist has reciprocated by deifying Reagan, despite the fact that the president raised taxes several times. He runs the Reagan Legacy Project, which led the charge to rename National Airport and has stamped Reagan's name on more than 100 schools, highways, gardens, missile silos and roundabouts around the world. He suggests, half-seriously, that "there is space for one more" on Mount Rushmore.

But Norquist's main mission is keeping his members devout.

In his airy meeting room, he pointed to a scoreboard-size sign listing the 2010 signatories to the Taxpayer Protection Pledge and expressed confidence that he will "eventually" bring the six Republican House members yet to sign into the fold.

"When there are active primaries," he said, "that's the easiest time to get people."

[OttoVonBismarck]

Why do politicians let some fanatic control their actions?  What's to stop all the Congressmen from collectively reneging on that pledge?  What's he going to do, campaign against every single one of them?

Cantor has slowly become one of the young leaders of the GOP Caucus (as reflected by his position as House Majority Leader.) He is even talked about as someone who might get the nomination to run for President some day (in a few election cycles), although his recent behavior may be the end of such talk. But it isn't just the loyalty some members of Congress have to Cantor, it is that Cantor essentially represents the stance of a huge portion of GOP Congressmen who are not willing to raise taxes.

I can sort of understand it. A lot of Blue Dog Democrats campaigned on how they were going to reflect their State's values in Congress, but they went along with a few of Obama's plans and many of the Blue Dog Democrats lost their seats in 2010. Essentially members of the GOP are afraid of the same thing happening to them, all those new Congressmen were elected essentially as a repudiation of Obama's policies, if they are seen to have negotiated with Obama and supported an Obama tax increase it could cause them to lose reelection.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I'm curious: how much do you think Obama and his economic team might think that trimming entitlements is a good idea and are using the Republican hard line as cover with their own base?

None. I think Obama is a devout Keynesian and thinks we should be spending far more, not less. The only reason he's conceding on cuts is because otherwise our rating by Moody's and et al will be reduced in August and the economy will go into a major recession if he doesn't agree to some spending cuts. Obama is a horse trader of the first degree, if he legitimately was willing to cut entitlements it was because he's a politician interested in getting agreements done not because he really believed in trimming entitlements. I've seen no evidence Obama would not like America to essentially be a social welfare State ala Norway. At the same time Obama is the most blatantly "political" of any recent President, who is willing to give away any of his key ideals in exchange for getting consensus and passing legislation.

[grumbler]

Why do politicians let some fanatic control their actions?  What's to stop all the Congressmen from collectively reneging on that pledge?  What's he going to do, campaign against every single one of them?

Grover Norquist, the anti-tax enforcer behind the scenes of the debt debate

It is interesting that the Republican equivalent of ACORN is so open about his activities, and yet Republicans claim they can see the Emperor's new clothes on him, while they frothed at the mouth and barked at the moon over the lack of clothes on ACORN.

[grumbler]

I've seen no evidence Obama would not like America to essentially be a social welfare State ala Norway.

I could say the exact same thing about either Bush:  As far as the evidence goes, the only reason they didn't create a social welfare state like Norway's is because they couldn't get away with it, so had to talk and campaign as though they didn't want to.

Of course, that would be an absurd thing to say about the Bushes or any President, no?