Grover still rules the GOP with an iron fist, but there are signs that his grip might be slipping.

A small but increasingly vocal group of freshman Republicans are publicly rejecting the idea they are beholden to Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform pledge for their entire congressional careers.

One such member, Scott Rigell of Virginia, has openly rejected the pledge, explaining on his website that it would prevent Congress in some cases from eliminating corporate loopholes or government subsidies because those changes would have to be revenue-neutral. The math, he said, just doesn’t make sense.

Of course, it's not about "math" because Grover's pledge isn't about deficits or the debt. It's about keeping taxes low for rich people and "starving the beast."

Freshman Reps. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.), Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.) and Rob Woodall (R-Ga.) never signed the pledge to begin with, making up half of the six House Republicans who refused to sign on.

Woodall argued the pledge was too restrictive because it promises that lawmakers must “oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.”

Make no mistake -- Grover still runs the place. But for the first time, there are a few cracks in the dam.

We already know he's not too bright, so it's no surprise that Texas Gov. Rick Perry is glomming onto this tactic just as former Norquist followers are pulling back from strict adherence. And we know he isn't trying to get onto the Romney ticket, since they can't stand each other. I wonder what he's thinking:

Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist has held most Republicans by the scruff of the neck during recent tax debates due to their having signed the ATR anti-tax pledge, which states that the signees will not vote for a tax increase any time, for any reason. Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), who received accolades from Norquist during his presidential run, is aiming to start a similar pledge in the Lone Star State:

Borrowing a page from anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist’s playbook, Perry said on Monday, “Each and every member of the Legislature or anyone aspiring to become a member of the Legislature should sign on.” And right on the Governor’s website, individuals and lawmakers can sign on to the Compact: Yes, I stand with Governor Perry and I support his Texas Budget Compact. I want my state representatives in the Texas Legislature to sign on to Governor Perry’s Texas Budget Compact.

The compact calls for complete opposition to tax increases, as well as constitutional spending limits and restrictions on using the state’s Rainy Day Fund (which Perry previously pluggedusing federal money meant for education). While Perry isn’t personally tracking who signs his pledge, he said that outside organizations might.

Part of the compact calls for legislators to eschew budget gimmicks, even though Perry himself is quite fond of using such gimmicks to balance his budget. As Texas State Rep. Mike Villarreal said in a statement, “Governor Perry loves to talk about his principles in the abstract, but he doesn’t want to discuss the disabled kids who lose health services when he won’t close corporate tax loopholes, or the students crowded into full classrooms when he won’t touch the Rainy Day Fund.”

Seriously, these people are nuts:

[Grover] Norquist is now mapping out how he can ensure further anti-tax victories by securing Republican majorities. In an interview with the National Journal, he mused that a GOP mandate would obviously enact an extension of the Bush tax cuts, work to maintain a repatriation holiday for corporate profits, and even pass House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) plan that jeopardizes Medicare. But when asked what Republicans should do if faced with a Democratic majority that won’t keep the tax cuts, Norquist had a simple answer: “impeach” Obama.

NJ: What if the Democrats still have control? What’s your scenario then?

NORQUIST: Obama can sit there and let all the tax [cuts] lapse, and then the Republicans will have enough votes in the Senate in 2014 to impeach. The last year, he’s gone into this huddle where he does everything by executive order. He’s made no effort to work with Congress.

The Republican Party is being ruled by clowns and idiots, to put it mildly. But even with the Joe Walshes and Dana Rohrabachers, there's no way that the Republicans will go down this route. Impeaching over letting tax holiday they voted for expire? Getouttahere, Grover. You may think you rule Washington, but that's just delusional.

Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist has turned the country into his own personal kingdom, demanding a loyalty oath from elected officials that supersedes any oath of office they take. And frighteningly, the Republican Party and the rest of the country just let him take that power.

But don't expect him to be honest with us about his power.

All of the Republican presidential candidates, with the exception of Utah Jon Huntsman, have committed, in writing, to the American people, not to me, to the American people, that they won't raise taxes. What they say is, "I'm going to go to Washington. You know what I'm not going to do? I'm not going to raise your taxes. I'm going to fix the mess." It's the Democrats whose position is that the only problem in Washington, D.C., is the peasants aren't sending enough cash in for the king to spend.

It's hard to be more disingenuous than Grover Norquist. This pledge isn't to the American people--the American people by and large want taxes raised on the wealthy to bring their rates back up to Clinton--not Eisenhower--levels. So any pledge is to King Grover is just that, not to the American people. So Norquist can shove that "Democrats want the peasants to send more cash for the king to spend" from whence it came.

And if it wasn't David Gregory, who has never met a Republican meme he didn't love, a competent journalist would point out to Norquist that it's been Republican administrations that have increased government spending, time and again.

But hey, let's look at system failing 99% of Americans and simply think that lower taxes will cure all. It's worked so well for the last ten years, hasn't it?
Transcripts below the fold

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On the eve of what will be the failure of the Super Committee to reach an agreement (a good thing!), CBS' Steve Kroft interviewed Grover Norquist as though he were King of the country, deserving of deference and awe for his hostage-taking and holding.

This clip encapsulates everything wrong with Grover, the Republicans, and their ridiculous obeisance to a pledge that has more meaning to Republicans than the Pledge of Allegiance or their oath to the United States Constitution.

KROFT: You make it pretty clear. If someone breaks the pledge you're going to do everything you can to get rid of them.

NORQUIST: To educate the voters that they raised taxes. Lookit, we educate people --

KROFT: To get rid of them --

NORQUIST: To encourage them to go into another line of work like shoplifting or bank robbing where they have to do their own...stealing.

KROFT: You've got them by the short hairs!

NORQUIST: The voters do. Yeah.

KROFT: They're going to have to march in lockstep with Grover Norquist.

NORQUIST: With the taxpayers of their state.

So the "short hairs" reference was cute, but Kroft really missed an opportunity here. When polls consistently show that 70 percent of American taxpayers favor tax hikes, or at the very least, expiry of the Bush rates, Kroft owed it to viewers to ask him specifically which voters in those states he would be "educating." Norquist makes it sound like most people just loathe and despise the notion of paying more in taxes, except the polls prove that to be a lie. When Alan Greenspan gets behind their expiry, it should serve as a fairly large clue to Kroft, if not Norquist.

Yet, in what I've come to view as the lazy interviewer style, Kroft just lets it go with a laugh and a wave. But hey. At least he got to use the phrase "got 'em by the short hairs" on national television. So there's that.

Oh, come on, Harry! The best thing that could happen would be a stalemate that causes the automatic cuts to kick in -- because the Republicans can only screw the Democrats if they refuse to raise taxes, but you allow them to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid anyway. Whatever you hand them, it's on you, dude.

And of course, you and the president swallowed the whole deficit "crisis" fairy tale to begin with (and were cynical enough to use the safety net as a bargaining chip). So on the whole, we'd be pretty happy with gridlock:

WASHINGTON -- A new wave of pessimism colored super committee talks on Tuesday as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) blasted anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist for meddling with the panel's progress and suggested that the American public "impeach" him.

During a stakeout with reporters, Reid read aloud part of an interview Norquist did with The Hill on Monday in which Norquist said Republican leaders in both chambers promised him they wouldn't accept a debt reduction deal that included tax hikes.

"It won't pass the House or the Senate," Norquist, who is the president of the advocacy group Americans for Tax Reform, said in the interview. "I've talked to the House leadership and the Senate leadership. They're not going to be passing any tax increases."

Reid also cited recent comments he said Norquist made to the Washington Post, including what Reid called "a stark warning" to super committee co-chair Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas): "I would say to Mr. Hensarling that he might want to call George Herbert Walker Bush and see how his second term went." Norquist was referring to the former president's "no new taxes" pledge in 1998, during his first campaign. Bush went back on his pledge once in the White House and went on to lose his second election.

"You'll have to admit it is a little disheartening to read the stuff to you I read from Grover Norquist," Reid told reporters.

To those who pay no attention, Jack Abramoff's public garment-rending on last night's 60 Minutes probably felt authentic. Falling on his sword claiming shame and sorrow, he castigated all of Washington, DC for their lobbying ways, warning that until lawmakers and staffers cannot become lobbyists, they'd all be owned.

Oh, how noble. How absolutely repentant. Thank you, Jack Abramoff, for coming before we, the people and telling us what needs to happen to clean up our government.

Those who pay attention, Jack Abramoff just gave one of his usual glib award-winning performances intended to sell whatever snake oil he's got in his pocket. In this case it appears to be his book, which I am sure will tell all of us how awful the lobbying industry is and how corrupt our government is. There just seemed to be one tiny thing missing. If you listened carefully to Mr. Abramoff, the system is responsible for the outcome. He apparently had little to do with it.

Even here in this little snippet, Abramoff paints the system at fault and then admits his own responsibility, except not really. You see, for Jack Abramoff, it's a convergence of a corrupt system with his "personality type." In other words, he was simply wired to avail himself of corruption when presented.

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Credit: Washington Post/Tax Policy Center

Herman Cain's now ubiquitous 9-9-9 tax plan went from the ridiculous to the sublime during Tuesday night's Republican presidential debate. While House Republicans and Grover Norquist had complained that the pizza mogul's proposals constituted a tax increase, some of Cain's fellow White House hopefuls actually expressed concern that it would be lower and middle income Americans paying it.

And that is a very shocking development, indeed. After all, while he differs in his particulars, Herman Cain like Paul Ryan and George W. Bush would deliver a massive tax cut windfall for the wealthy. And like the Ryan budget voted for by 98 percent of Capitol Hill Republicans, the 9-9-9 plan would dramatically shift the tax burden to lower income Americans.

This week, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center added its devastating analysis to the growing list of negative assessments of the Cain 9-9-9 plan. Cain's opponents seized on it to punish him throughout last night's CNN debate. "The worst part about it," Congressman Ron Paul fretted, "It's regressive. Rick Santorum explained why:

"[R]eports are now out that 84 percent of Americans would pay more taxes under his plan. That's the analysis. And it makes sense, because when -- when you don't provide a standard deduction, when you don't provide anything for low-income individuals, and you have a sales tax and an income tax and, as Michele said, a value-added tax, which is really what his corporate tax is, we're talking about major increases in taxes on people."

Which is exactly right. As the Washington Post's Ezra Klein showed using TPC data, while raising taxes on most Americans Cain's payday to the richest is literally off the charts. As Klein explained today, "One problem with trying to graph the 9-9-9 plan is that the tax cuts for the rich are so large that it's hard to see what the policy is doing to the poor and the middle class. That's why I posted a table [above] rather than a chart earlier."

That's what necessarily happens when you cut the top income tax rate from 35 percent to 9 percent, eliminate the Earned Income Tax Credit for working Americans, and zero out the capital gains tax. (According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, two-thirds of all capital gains are reported by those with incomes over $1 million.) As Center for American Progress Vice President for Economic Policy Michael Ettlinger put it:

"[Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan] would be the biggest tax shift from the wealthy to the middle-class in the history of taxation, ever, anywhere."

Bigger even than the Paul Ryan budget passed by House Republicans in April. Just not by much.

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Timothy Noah gets through this entire post, noting that even the tea partiers mostly agree with tax hikes, and is still wondering why Republican officials are so out of step with most Republican voters -- without mentioning the famous pledge to Pope Grover. Nobody likes a primary challenge, Tim!

This has been said before but it cannot be said enough. Republican presidential candidates and Republican members of Congress are out of touch with Republican voters on the necessity of raising taxes to reduce the budget deficit. A Washington Post-Bloomberg News poll conducted Oct. 6-9 found that 68 percent of all voters and 54 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters favored raising taxes on incomes above $250,000 (i.e., the Obama plan) to tackle the deficit. On the question of whether to reduce Social Security or Medicare benefits to reduce the deficit, 83 and 82 percent, respectively, of all voters opposed. For Republicans and Republican-leaners, these proportions were only slightly lower: 79 and 77 percent, respectively. Entitlement spending will have to be cut, of course, to reduce the deficit, because entitlement spending represents a majority of all federal spending. (Only one-fifth of federal spending resides in the "non-defense discretionary" category currently being whittled to the bone.) But that option is pretty unpopular with just about everyone and it is therefore politically unwise for Republican politicians to try to balance the budget through spending cuts alone.

It's also economically insane to contemplate hacking away at government spending at this particular moment, when unemployment is stuck above 9 percent and the median income is dropping like a stone. As my grade-school friend Daniel Alpert, managing partner of Westwood Capital, writes in a new report for the New America Foundationcoauthored by Robert Hockett of Cornell Law School and New York University economist Nouriel Robini:"Under existing conditions of weak global demand, austerity would simply lead to a vicious circle of yet weaker demand, weaker investment, more unemployment, and still weaker demand, ad infinitum – the familiar “downward spiral” of all “great” depressions wrought by the “paradox of thrift.” This is especially true if austerity is pursued simultaneously in Europe and the United States, as now is in real danger of happening owing to European measures that are just as wrong-headed as now-voguish American ones. And if the emerging economies in Asia and elsewhere begin to experience slower growth rates, as is now being projected, U.S. austerity will do yet more damage."

Have a nice day!

It's interesting that leading up to the 2010 midterms Grover Norquist was being hailed as a conservative mega-star and now Republican politicians are slowly starting to take an honest view of his behavior and actually publicly bashing him to boot. Rep. Frank Wolf is the newest member of the GOP to smack him around

Think Progress:

Virginia Rep. Frank Wolf (R), one of six House Republicans who hasn’t signed Americans for Tax Reform’s no-taxes pledge, took to the House floor today and slammed ATR President Grover Norquist, accusing Norquist of working with “unsavory characters” and pushing a pledge that makes it harder for Congress to achieve meaningful deficit reduction and tax reform.

Wolf said the Taxpayer Protection Pledge created by Norquist and ATR has had the effect of “paralyzing Congress” and making it impossible to even discuss ways to reform the tax code:

WOLF: Everything must be on the table, and I believe how the pledge is interpreted and enforced by Mr. Norquist is a roadblock to realistically reforming our tax code. When Senator Tom Coburn recently fought to eliminate the special interest ethanol tax subsidy, who led the opposition? Mr. Norquist. [...]

Have we really reached the point where one person’s demand for ideological purity is paralyzing Congress to the point that even a discussion of tax reform is viewed as breaking a no-tax pledge?

Recently John Huntsman, who's running for president refused to take his tax pledge, but Wolf went further in his comments, not only bashing his ideology, but calling out his friends.

“My concern is with the other individuals, groups, and causes with whom Mr. Norquist is associated that have nothing to do with keeping taxes low,” Wolf continued.

He cited Norquist’s relationships with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and terrorist financier Sami Al-Arian, and his ties to Fannie Mae and the Internet gambling industry.

“Simply put, I believe Mr. Norquist is connected with or has profited from a number of unsavory people and groups out of the mainstream,” the congressman said.

I'm not saying I believe in the allegations Wolf levies about some of the people or groups in his speech that he calls unsavory, but that's not the point of this post. The idea that Wolf would say these harsh words to the mighty Grover is pretty amazing on the House floor.