Joe Klein’s latest TIME column intends to blast anti-tax-hike bulldog Grover Norquist as an unreasonable extremist.
But for those who see that the federal government’s chief problem is its overspending, Norquist is likely to come across pretty well:
“I had this history teacher who said that most people don’t know who their Congressman is,” Norquist told me, over coffee, as the President and Congress wrangled about the debt-ceiling limit — an argument Norquist probably has done more to precipitate than any other person in our nation’s capital. “I had this insight: What if you could brand the Republican Party like Coke or Pepsi? What if it was defined as the no-tax party? Then people would know what they were getting.”
The rest really is history. No congressional Republican has voted for a major tax increase since 1991. All but six of the current 240 Republican members of the House and all but seven of the 47 Republican Senators have signed his pledge. Norquist has redefined the Republicans, for good and ill, as the no-tax party.
Later, Klein presents Norquist with the argument that a tax increase does not always coincide with a damaged economy:
Confronted with the tax history of the past 30 years, Norquist concedes immediately, “Even if it’s a toss-up on that question, there’s still the question of liberty. Taxes are a limitation on liberty. You are stealing money from some people to give it to others.”
