Once upon a time, conservative leader and activist Grover Norquist thought an obstructionist minority party was a threat to democracy itself. Now? Not so much:
NORQUIST:Nothing good happens in the next two years out of this Congress. Nothing good.If you read in the newspaper that there’s a bill with a nice sounding name, and it sounds in the first sentence like the bill is good, you haven’t read the whole bill.
Nothing good happens. They’re not going to cut taxes.
(APPLAUSE)
Look, get married, develop a hobby, learn to belly dance, learn to golf — you know, we got two years free, but we gotta spend some time and effort playing defense here.
Because the Democrats are going to be like young men on prom dates — they’re gonna keep asking the same question of us over and over and over again. And our job is to say “no, no, no, no” for two years.
It doesn’t do us any good to go “no, no, yes” okay? It has to be “no” for two years in a row. It’s going to be tiresome, it’s going to be boring. People are gonna go, “oh maybe this bill isn’t as bad as it looks.” Don’t eat it, don’t swallow it, don’t touch it. Nothing good passes this Congress.
I realize that Grover thinks this is a brilliant tactical maneuver, but there's one major flaw that he perhaps overlooked. The American people support most if not all of the goals of the Democratic congress. According to today's NYT poll, they're even willing to live with higher taxes to make one of the centerpieces of the agenda happen..
Yes, you read that correctly.
They are even willing to live with higher taxes to make it happen.
Nevertheless, Norquist believes obstruction is going to prove a winning political strategy.
After spending your entire life spinning, I understand that it must be hard to stop, but wow... Norquist's speech today wasn't given to the general public; it was given to movement conservatives. If this is what they are telling each other... if this is what they actually believe... I hope they packed well, because that trip through the wilderness isn't going to be a short one.
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