Grover Norquist is a charming fellow

Grover Norquist, the influential conservative insider who runs Americans for Tax Reform, has never been one to take the high road. He's compared bipartisanship to date rape, wants to make government small enough "to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub," and likened taxation of the rich to Nazi persecution of Jews.

So it's not surprising to see more outlandish rhetoric from him in the latest issue of the Washington Monthly.

First, he has a long letter criticizing an Alan Wolfe article titled "Why Conservatives Can't Govern," which argued that conservatives in power end up "expanding government for political gain, but always in ways that validate their disregard for the very thing they are expanding." Norquist's response concludes with this remarkable passage:

Big government doesn't work well. The East Germans really truly believed. There was no lack of faith in government in the Politburo. Limited government can do the limited number of things that governments can do if they are not constantly distracted by trying to do the imposible with the blunt force of the state as their tool.

Norquist is likening believers in "big government" to dictatorial Communist regimes, and suggesting that the failures of those regimes disproves Wolfe's argument. It's an absurd point -- does the chaos resulting from the lack of a functioning state in Iraq disprove his belief in limited government? (I also love the tautology "Limited government can do the limited number of things that governments can do" -- maybe they should teach logic at Norquist's famous insider meetings.)

Elsewhere in the magazine, Monthly editor Rachel Morris quotes Norquist making a hilarious "joke" about sending Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), a staunch opponent of illegal immigration, to Guantanamo:

Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, described Rep. Tancredo as "the face of the Republican party losing elections for the next 20 years." (He added that the GOP might have avoided this problem by "sending Tancredo to Guantanamo").

Like I said, he's one charming fellow.

Comments

[Dave]

He didn't liken taxation of the rich to Nazi persecution of the Jews--it was much _worse_ than that. He explicity compared the estate tax to the Holocaust on "Fresh Air" on NPR.

And this guy is a power figure in the Republican party?

[BigMediaBlog]

His brother is also the DHS_CFO. Like Chris_Cannon and Karl_Rove, when it comes to cheap labor they're willing to rub elbows with those on the far-left. He appeared on a panel shown on CSPAN with and supported the same "reforms" as the_ACLU, the_NCLR, and similar groups. See also his possible role in lifting Davis_Bacon on the Gulf_Coast as well as this:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19597

[BigMediaBlog]

The FPM link appears not to work anymore, but it's here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1489869/posts

[Seth]

Here's the actual quote decide what you think he's comparing:

The argument that some who play to the politics of hate, and envy and class division will say is "Well that's only 2 percent, or 5 percent in the near future, of Americans likely to have to pay that tax."

That's the morality of the Holocaust. It's only a small percentage, it's not you it's somebody else.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1452983