(Article changed on December 9, 2012 at 20:11)
By P. A. Triot
Grover G. Norquist is an American lobbyist, conservative activist and founder of Americans for Tax Reform.
If his name is not already a household word, it soon will be. He is known as the promoter of the "Taxpayer Protection Pledge," which prior to the November 2012 elections was signed by 95 percent of all Republican members of Congress and all but one of the candidates running for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, to oppose any increases in income tax rates for wealthy individuals and businesses, according to Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.com).
Norquist is the guy who came up with the extremist idea of starving the federal government because he thought it was impossible to get control of higher taxes and runaway spending. His 2012 non-taxation oath was the latest of his ideas to achieve the starvation of the federal government.
George H. W. Bush's presidency was derailed because he had to break his 1988 promise of "no new taxes," Bush's response to Norquist's early push to starve the government.
It's this "no-new-taxes" approach and "Taxpayer Protection Pledge," in the minds of Republican congress members, that seems to trump those same politicians' oaths to "preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States."
That pledge to not raise taxes during a time of war (such as the war in Afghanistan) might understandably be considered by many people as treason. (Ought investigations be pursued in that event?)
Even if the political misconduct doesn't rise to the level of treason, Republican diehards who choose to remain loyal to Norquist rather than to the U. S. Constitution are bound to pay a significant price in the form of outrage of their home constituencies' anger and wrath in the 2014 mid-term election.
After all, between 60 percent and 80 percent of the American people want Congress to force rich people and corporations to pay "their fair share" of taxes in this country.
Of course no one knows just what a "fair share" is but we'll find out soon enough, if not in the next month or two then in the next or two years.
In the meantime, Norquist is angry with the handful of Republicans in Congress who have indicated they might reconsider their signing of The Taxpayer Protection Pledge because the nation's economy is in such dire straights. Norquist is apoplectic about that twist catching on; I'm afraid that he's headed for a stroke.
On the other hand, the public is so angry with Republicans obstructing any sort of solution that might portray President Obama as competent that it will engage in a voter riot, not a riot in the traditional sense but a groundswell of rejection of the Republican Party.
If we have two more years like the past two years, the public will exact a revenge on the GOP that hasn't been experienced in America for 150 years.
Republicans' continued loyalty to Norquist will be, and ought to be, seen as a betrayal of their oaths of office as congress members.
Rather than preserving and protecting the Constitution of the United States, the GOP would instead be seen as swearing their loyalty to a man who is out to subvert the Constitution, which is, of course, what Norquist is up to.
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