The World According to Grover
News: Newt, Hillary, and the "low-maintenance coalition": A conservative strategist handicaps 2008.
June 26, 2006
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Grover Norquist must be the most hectic figure in Washington. Lobbyist (for Microsoft and the NRA), activist for lower taxes (through his Americans for Tax Reform,) and loyal pal (serving as a conduit for Jack Abramoff’s creepy deals), he dashes around town, seeking to hold together the often-quarrelsome Republican contingents. Under Reagan, the glue that kept the disparate factions together was anticommunism. With Reagan gone and Bush looking like a screw-up, it’s no easy job knitting together free market libertarians who want less government with the Christian Right, which wants more, with the supernationalists of the old GOP, who just want more money. Norquist’s solution is what he calls a "low-maintenance coalition" tied together by the desire "to be left alone:" Get off the Christers’ backs, let the capitalists rip off the middle class and screw the poor, and give the likes of Cheney and Rumsfeld the payoffs they so richly deserve.
With all eyes turning towards 2008, Norquist last Friday took time, at a breakfast hosted by The American Prospect to provide his own tip sheet on the presidential field:
- On the obvious question: “My assumption is Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee. The debates will be Hillary Clinton and 7 guys. Biden will say things like, ‘I was thinking today how clever and witty Hillary is’,” and by the way—here Norquist’s voice rises to a shout--“Bayh is an idiot!”
- On John Kerry: “My guess is the 93-6 vote against withdrawal [in Iraq] was the rest of the senators screwing Kerry. Like yeah, go out and stand in traffic and we’ll be with you in a second.”
- On Mark Warner: “Moderate Dem, promised not to raise taxes when he ran for Virginia governor, but passed the largest tax increase in Virginia’s history. We know how to beat those guys. We’ve got the guns trained on that one. We won’t even have to retread literature.”
- On the Republican field: “The guy who wins is the guy who stands in the middle of the conservative circle,” and that person right now is former Virginia Governor George Allen: “He comes across like George Bush.”
- On Mitt Romney: “It would be nice to see Romney do for the Mormons what Kennedy did for the Roman Catholics but… his problem is he’s never lived in the United States. He’s lived in Utah and Massachusetts.”
- On Jeb Bush: “I think he would be the strongest candidate. He’s the best Republican governor in the country. [They say] you can’t run another Bush or people will say `dynasty.’ Well, when you are running against Hillary Clinton that’s a harder argument for the New York Times to make.”
- On John McCain: “Campaign finance reform was enough to upend him in 2000... the right to life people were concerned, gun people were concerned, tax people were concerned. Now he’s switched his position on taxes, on guns, on judges, on Kyoto He’s got to run as the guy who flip flopped on central issues. Another thing: He can’t give the right to life people the judge they need [because] he has to have a Supreme Court that will maintain campaign finance reform. There are no judges in America who will look at the constitution and say it is flexible enough for campaign finance reform but not flexible enough for Roe v Wade. But what’s interesting about McCain is his numbers have not fallen with immigration—the one issue he’s good on.”
- On Texas governor Rick Perry: “Second best governor in the country.’’
- On Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback: “If you have the Mormon from Massachusetts, you might want to have the evangelical turned Roman Catholic leader of the social conservative movement” for a running mate. Or you might want [Mike Huckabee], the socially conservative governor of Arkansas. But the man from Hope has a slight problem--he is a serial tax increaser.”
- On Rudy Giuliani: “He likes to be thought of as running for president. But he’s making an awful lot of money.”
- On Gingrich: “I think more and more Newt looks at things and says, I know these guys who are running. I can do better than this. I think he’s standing by the door waiting to see if it opens up.”
- Chuck Hagel: “Bush without the war. Good on all the key issues. Hagel has turned Nebraska into a Republican state…he has a track record, he’s a party builder."
- Bottom line: “I think Gingrich could run’’
James Ridgeway is Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief.
