Bye Bye Grover
http://www.salon.com/2012/11/14/is_it_game_over_for_grover_norquist/
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Two meetings in Washington today tell the story of the decline of Grover Norquist, the conservative activist who is seeing his near-iron grip on GOP tax policy over the past two decades slipping. One is Norquists weekly Wednesday Meeting, a gathering of more than 150 elected officials, political activists, and movement leaders who plot strategy and coordinate messaging every week. After big losses at the polls in last weeks election and a fracturing conservative base just as Congress heads into its most important tax negotiations in years, its safe to assume that this mornings meeting was tense.
Norquist faces an unprecedented rear-guard attack as the congressional GOP fractures on the tax issue. Last year, there were 238 members of the House and 41 members of the Senate who had signed Norquists pledge. This year, there are just 217 in the House one shy from the 218 needed for a majority and 39 in the Senate, an all-time low. As the Hills Russell Berman reports, while Norquist claims his army is 219 strong in the House, two of those members have since disavowed Norquists pledge.
And its not just in rhetoric. Norquist faced one of the biggest legislative tests of his power when a subsidy for ethanol production came up for renewal last year. He staunchly opposed it, saying eliminating the tax subsidy would be a de facto tax increase and thus a violation of the pledge. Republicans joined Democrats to kill the subsidy anyway.
Norquist has also been rebuked on looming military cuts that will automatically take effect at the end of the year if Congress and the president fail to reach a budget deal. Republican hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have said theyre willing to raise taxes to preserve Pentagon funding. Asked about how this would conflict with the pledge this summer, Graham shrugged and said, Ive crossed the Rubicon on that. Today, even Sen. John McCain said at the Washington Ideas Forum that fewer and fewer people are signing this [Norquist] pledge. He said this somewhat triumphantly, the Huffington Posts Sam Stein noted.