Grover Norquist
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Grover Glenn Norquist (born October 19, 1956), the president of the noted anti-tax lobbying group Americans for Tax Reform, is a well-connected conservative activist with close ties to business and to the media.
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Public life
Norquist was one of the so-called "Gang of Five" identified in Nina Easton's 2000 book by that name, which gives a history of leaders of the modern conservative movement. He has been described as "a thumb-in-the-eye radical rightist" (The Nation), and "Tom Paine crossed with Lee Atwater plus just a soupçon of Madame Defarge" (P.J. O'Rourke). Norquist has been noted for his widely quoted quip: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." The pledge of "no new taxes" that many Republican legislators have signed was his project.
According to the critical website MediaTransparency.Org, Norquist is "adept at media appearances ... writes a monthly politics column for the American Spectator magazine, and frequently speaks at regional and state think tanks of the conservative movement. He is also well connected with large-scale U.S. business interests, having served as economist and chief speech writer for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (1983-1984)."[1] (http://www.mediatransparency.org/people/grover_norquist.htm)
Shortly after Bill Clinton was elected president of the United States in 1992, Norquist began hosting a weekly get-together of conservatives in his Washington office to coordinate activities and strategy. "We were sort of like the Mensheviks after the Russian Revolution," recalls Marshall Wittmann, who attended the first meeting as a representative of the Christian Coalition. The "Wednesday Meeting" of Norquist's Leave Us Alone Coalition has become an important hub of conservative political organizing. George W. Bush began sending a representative to the Wednesday Meeting even before he formally announced his candidacy for president. "Now a White House aide attends each week," reported USA Today in June 2001. "Vice President Cheney sends his own representative. So do GOP congressional leaders, right-leaning think tanks, conservative advocacy groups and some like-minded K Street lobbyists. The meeting has been valuable to the White House because it is the political equivalent of one-stop shopping. By making a single pitch, the administration can generate pressure on members of Congress, calls to radio talk shows, and political buzz from dozens of grassroots organizations. It also enables the White House to hear conservatives vent in private — and to respond — before complaints fester."[2] (http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2001-06-01-grover.htm)
"Cutting the government in half in one generation is both an ambitious and reasonable goal," Norquist stated in May 2000. "If we work hard we will accomplish this and more by 2025. Then the conservative movement can set a new goal. I have a recommendation: To cut government in half again by 2050."[3] (http://www.heritage.org/about/community/insider/2000/may00/welcome.html)
Even within conservative circles, he has made some enemies, possibly due to what some describe as a combative personality. Columnist Tucker Carlson harshly criticized him as a "mean-spirited, humorless, dishonest little creep ... an embarrassing anomaly, the leering, drunken uncle everyone else wishes would stay home...[he] is repulsive, granted, but there aren't nearly enough of him to start a purge trial."[4] (http://slate.msn.com/id/3654/entry/23930)
Norquist is also considered in some conservative circles to be soft on radical Islam. His wife, Samah Alrayyes, is a longtime Islamic activist and Norquist is credited with finding her employment at USAID in the current administration. He has been standoffish when questioned as to whether he has converted to Islam, which is a common premarital requirement when a non-believer marries a devout Muslim. He has also been criticized for speaking at CAIR events and for supporting the "special relationship" between the US and Saudi Arabia. His stock is therefore dropping among conservatives who are particularly concerned about terrorism and its connection to Islam.
Norquist is the founder of the Islamic Institute (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22243-2004Jul1.html), a group believed to be funded by foreign governments, Wahhabi Islam (http://www.rickross.com/reference/islamic/islamic35.html)(Bin Laden's sect) elements in Saudi Arabia, and U.S. Muslim groups recently raided by a special Treasury Department task force for funding Al Qaeda and Palestinian terrorists.A Troubling Influence (http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/readarticle.asp?ID=11209&p=1) The Islamic Institute was led by former Alamoudi aide and former AMC staffer Khaled Saffuri. Abdurahman Alamoudi plead guilty in 2004 (http://www.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel04/alamoudi073004.htm) to accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from Libya in violation of U.S. law and attempting to hide it from the government. Through his Islamic Institute, Norquist has successfully arranged for groups like the American Muslim Council (http://www.danielpipes.org/article/423)(AMC) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (http://www.anti-cair-net.org/) (CAIR) to gain access to the White House thanks to the White House's Associate Director of Cabinet Affairs Ali Tulbah, a Muslim, and his predecessor, Suhail Kahn. At the same time, Tulbah and Kahn excluded moderate American Muslim groups from White House access. Both Tulbah and Kahn have family ties to extremist Wahhabi religious groups. AMC and CAIR have expressed support for Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda and are actively campaigning to waterdown immigration controls, law enforcement, and intelligence gathering.See checks from Alamoudi to the Islamic Institute here (http://michellemalkin.com/archives/000318.htm)
Norquist's page on the web site of Americans for Tax Reform includes laudatory quotes about him from former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and from columnist P. J. O'Rourke.
In addition to heading Americans for Tax Reform, Norquist is currently on the board of directors of the National Rifle Association and the American Conservative Union, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and chairman emeritus of the Islamic Institute.
Norquist has also helped California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger sell his plan to reform the CalPERS system.
Biography
Norquist grew up in Weston, Massachusetts. Although he is best known as the head of Americans for Tax Reform, his introduction to conservative politics was rooted in the anti-Soviet rhetoric of the Cold War. "I was actually a foreign-policy conservative first," he told an interviewer in 1998. His political leanings were cemented at the age of eleven by reading anti-Communist tracts such as Masters of Deceit by J. Edgar Hoover and Witness by Whittaker Chambers.[5] (http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m1571/n3_v14/20174381/p1/article.jhtml) He received a B.A. from Harvard College, which he attended from 1974 to 1978, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School (1979–1981).[6] (http://watch.pair.com/database2.html)
After leaving graduate school, Norquist became executive director of both the National Taxpayers Union and the national College Republicans organization, holding both positions until 1983. He founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985. In 1994 he worked with Newt Gingrich and the Heritage Foundation to draft the Contract with America.
Norquist has also served as an economic advisor to Angola UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi and was once registered with the Department of Justice as a foreign agent of Angola.[7] (http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/fara/fara2nd97/COUNTRY/ANGOLA.HTM#5061)
Norquist has also been accused of using his various organizations to launder political money for a number of like-minded individuals and groups. See, for example, the scandal involving Oregon's Bill Sizemore (http://www.americanpolitics.com/20021209Koop.html), whose political organizations were shut down by a judge after a jury agreed they had engaged in racketeering, in part due to evidence of a money-laundering scheme involving Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform.
Norquist is reportedly an admirer of Vladimir Lenin, and David Brock's Blinded by the Right stated that Norquist had a portrait of Lenin on his living-room wall.
See also
Quotations
- "We are trying to change the tones in the state capitals -- and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship."
- quoted in John Aloysius Farrell, "Rancor becomes top D.C. export: GOP leads charge in ideological war," Denver Post, May 26, 2003 [8] (http://tanque.org/peptide/norquist.html)
- "And we've had four more years pass where the age cohort that is most Democratic and most pro-statist, are those people who turned 21 years of age between 1932 and 1952--Great Depression, New Deal, World War II--Social Security, the draft--all that stuff. That age cohort is now between the ages of 70 and 90 years old, and every year 2 million of them die. So 8 million people from that age cohort have passed away since the last election; that means, net, maybe 1 million Democrats have disappeared--and even the Republicans in that age group. [...] You know, some Bismarck, German thing, okay? Very un-American. Very unusual for America. The reaction to Great Depression, World War II, and so on: Centralization--not as much centralization as the rest of the world got, but much more than is usual in America. We've spent a lot of time dismantling some of that and moving away from that level of regimentation: getting rid of the draft."
- interview with Pablo Pardo from the Spanish periodical El Mundo as transcribed from the recording by The Weekly Standard [9] (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/695jwmmb.asp?pg=1)
- "Alexander Hamilton has been on the $10 since 1928, he's been well honored by the country, he was a great Secretary of the Treasury. But of all the people on the currency, the only one who isn't a president." [Note: Benjamin Franklin, whose visage graces the $100 bill, also was not a president.]
- interview with CNN's Judy Woodruff on the possibility of putting Ronald Reagan on the $10 bill, June 8, 2004
Sources
- Norquist biography (http://www.atr.org/staff/ggnbio.html), Americans for Tax Reform web site
- Norquist biography (http://www.aoctp.org/gnorquist.shtml), Association of Concerned Taxpayers
External links
- Disinfopedia: Grover Norquist (http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Grover_Norquist)
- Disinfopedia: the In Defense of Freedom Coalition (http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=In_Defense_of_Freedom_Coalition).
- Grover Norquist profile, NNDB (http://www.nndb.com/people/482/000049335/).
- A lecture (http://knight.stanford.edu/lectures/knight/1997/index.html) given by Elizabeth Drew at the Ninth Annual Knight Lecture, Stanford University, May 5, 1997.
- Critical article (http://www.commondreams.org/news2001/0502-13.htm) from CommonDreams.Org concerning Norquist's proposed reforms of the medical industry
- Testimony by Norquist (http://judiciary.senate.gov/oldsite/te090701si-norquist.htm) to the Senate Judiciary Committee, September 7, 2001.
- Franklin Foer, "Fevered Pitch (http://tanque.org/peptide/norquist.rad.html)", and article from The New Republic, November 12, 2001, alleging ties between Norquist and radical Islamist elements.
- An article (http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york031903.asp) from the National Review, March 19, 2003, describing a clash between Norquist and Frank Gaffney over Norquist's alleged ties to radical Islam.
- An article (http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-insnorquist061503jun15,0,7325314.story?coll=orl-opinion-headlines) about Norquist in the Orlando Sentinel
- FEC complaint filed against Norquist (http://www.citizensforethics.org/activities/20040204/), 4 February 2004.
- Grover Norquist (http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1008-07.htm) compares the estate tax to the Holocaust.
- Norquist's articles (http://www.atr.org/opeds/index.html) for the American Spectator, the American Enterprise Institute and other venues.
- Speeches and Testimony (http://www.atr.org/speechtestimony/index.html) by Grover Norquist and other ATR staff.
- Norquist interview (http://reason.com/9702/fe.int.norquist.shtml) with Reason Magazine, February 1997.
- transcript of an interview with Norquist (http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_norquist.html) on NOW with Bill Moyers.
- Government website from 1997 (http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/fara/fara1st97/REGS/05061.HTM) listing Grover Norquist as an agent of Jonas Savimbi's UNITA rebels in Angola and as an agent of the government of Seychelles who attempted to influence US Government policy in both of these nations.