As Capitol Hill moves ever closer to going over the fiscal cliff, the “one obstacle standing between Congress and compromise,” as Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said recently, is a 56-year-old, gray-grizzled pooh-bah plutocrat with a Harvard MBA who’s never been elected to public office.
Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, once compared bipartisanship to “date rape.” He has the air of a man who’s never faced harder times than when he has to wait for his cake at the dessert buffet table.
Yet so many Republican politicians fear him today because he got them to sign his “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” an idea he originally came up with in seventh grade (or so he boasted to The Daily Show).
The idea is simple: promise never to raise taxes. His goal is to shrink government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub,” by slashing federal programs that benefit most Americans.
Even Reagan knew when to raise taxes. It’s time to flush that pledge down the toilet.
It’s over, Grover.
Norquist…you’re fired!
