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Some political analysts watching the debt ceiling talks in Washington lament that the no-tax-hike pledge signed by most congressional Republicans may prevent a grand compromise in which tax increases accompany spending cuts.

To the man who leads the interest group behind the pledge, that's pretty much the idea.

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At the heart of the contentious talks between the White House and congressional Republicans on whether to raise the debt ceiling is a simple, one-sentence document many conservative lawmakers have signed, pledging not to increase taxes.

Ever.

"I _____ pledge to the taxpayers of the state of _____ and all the people of this state, that I will oppose and vote against all efforts to increase taxes," reads the version of the pledge signed by Republican lawmakers.

The driving force behind that pledge -- and perhaps the most powerful man in Washington that you've never heard about -- is a bearded, unassuming conservative activist who has never been elected to a public office.

Grover Norquist, president and founder of Americans for Tax Reform, is both respected and feared in the inner circles of Washington.

He has worked under Ronald Reagan, is close friends with Karl Rove and has been connected to scandals involving onetime Christian Coalition chief Ralph Reed and convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

He started the pledge campaign in 1985 and now has hundreds of names. He has the originals safely stored away, on file in perpetuity, just in case.

"We keep the originals in a vault that can't be burned, and we have multiple copies that can't be lost. So their pledges will be there forever," Norquist said.

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Norquist also has the ear of powerful Republican leaders, many who won't act on sensitive budget issues unless he has signed off.

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Every Wednesday morning Norquist convenes a meeting of prominent Republicans, political activists and GOP operatives to plan strategies.

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Norquist is using his leverage and clout in the ongoing debt ceiling negotiations. He is pressuring Republicans to hold firm and oppose tax hikes as part of a compromise.

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Michael Ettlinger, vice president for economic policy at the Center for American Progress, contended many Republican lawmakers would be more willing to compromise, if not for Norquist's threats of retribution if they stray from the pledge.

"We're getting to the point where we need serious people to sit down and make serious decisions, and drawing really hard lines in the sand the way Grover does is hurting the country," Ettlinger said, "and I think people who are signing that pledge are starting to recognize that and realize that that kind of hard line just is not in the best interest of the country."

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Some political analysts watching the debt ceiling talks in Washington lament that the no-tax-hike pledge signed by most congressional Republicans may prevent a compromise in which tax increases accompany spending cuts.

To the man who leads the interest group behind the pledge, that's pretty much the idea.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform -- the group whose oppose-all-tax-increases vow was signed by 235 House members and 41 senators, almost all of them Republicans -- said the pledge is doing what it's supposed to: preventing what he says are mistakes of 1982 and 1990, namely agreeing to tax increases and watching promised spending cuts evaporate.

Signed pledges are nothing new for politicians, but the debt talks and the approaching presidential campaign make them hard to miss. Some political analysts, including CNN chief political analyst Gloria Borger, are particularly vexed with Americans for Tax Reform's Taxpayer Protection Pledge. In a column, Borger argued the pledge may prevent what signees otherwise would want -- Democrats' approval of significant spending cuts and entitlement reforms as part of a deal to trim the United States' $14 trillion debt.

Administration officials say the country needs to raise its $14.3 trillion debt ceiling by August to avoid a partial default on loan obligations, and Republicans have demanded spending cuts as a prerequisite. Obama says that in return, he wants new tax revenue -- largely in the form of ending Bush-era tax cuts for wealthy Americans in 2013 -- to combine with the cuts to reduce the debt by $4 trillion over the next 10-12 years. Republicans, though, say they won't sign on to any tax increases.

"Pledges are proliferating in political campaigns, and people are being asked to sign up to things that ... (in some cases) lock their hands so they can't act," CNN senior political analyst David Gergen said.

It's yet to be seen whether the tax pledge will keep tax increases from a debt deal. In any event, interest groups' visibility is growing, and so is the tactic of demanding signed pledges from politicians, said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report.

"Politicians used to look to guidance from parties. Now they look to guidance -- or threats -- from interest groups," Rothenberg said. "As parities have diminished and these outside groups have flourished, I think you see more of these pledges."

There are old-fashioned, spoken campaign promises. And then there are pledges that interest groups fashion and a candidate signs, presumably knowing the group is prepared to announce any signee's deviation to the public.

Conservative groups aren't alone in pushing pledges. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee says more than 120 members of Congress, nearly all of them Democrats, are signees of a pledge to not privatize Social Security or raise the retirement age.

"I think there's a tendency for candidates to believe they have to appeal to the base, and there's a kind of threshold of credibility that they need to achieve, and that leads them to signing these pledges," Rothenberg said.

He said there's no good data on how useful pledges are to candidates. The utility depends on the issue mix and the candidates' credentials and skill -- many refuse a pledge and cast themselves in a I-decide-for-myself light. But in some cases, "if you don't sign the pledge, it can define you as a candidate, and you might spend the rest of the campaign defending and trying to move away from that issue," Rothenberg said.

GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, a former Utah governor, has made some high-profile refusals to sign pledges, including the "Cut, Cap and Balance" vow that demands Congress oppose raising the debt ceiling unless it makes significant budget cuts and passes a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution.

His refusal to sign that pledge, pushed by a coalition of conservative groups and signed by most other GOP presidential candidates, led U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, a Tea Party favorite, to say Huntsman was out of the running for his support.

"Other than the pledge of allegiance, I don't do a whole lot of pledges," Huntsman told CNN last month after DeMint's statement.

The Susan B. Anthony List asks presidential candidates to commit to its Pro-Life Citizens Pledge, in which signees agree to, among other things, select only anti-abortion rights appointees for certain Cabinet and executive branch positions. The group's communications director, Ciara Matthews, said "no one wants a candidate who goes out on a campaign trail and say, 'When it comes to debt reduction or pro-life issues, I don't know what I'm going to do.' "

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