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Is anti-tax activist Grover Norquist a major force in the Republican Party?

Not to hear House Speaker John Boehner tell it.

At his weekly news conference Thursday morning, Boehner (R-Ohio) was asked whether he believes the Americans for Tax Reform president and architect of the anti-tax pledge signed by an overwhelming majority of congressional Republicans is “a positive influence” on the House GOP conference.

The speaker shrugged his shoulders and paused at the podium for a full five seconds before responding.

“Listen, our focus here is on jobs,” Boehner said at last. “We’re doing everything we can to get our economy moving again and to get people back to work. It’s not often I’m asked about some random person in America.”

Asked whether he genuinely believed Norquist was a “random person” to members of his conference, Boehner replied, “Listen, our focus is on creating jobs, not talking about somebody’s personality.”

“Our conference is opposed to tax hikes because we believe that tax hikes will hurt our economy and put Americans out of work,” he added when asked about the impact of Norquist’s anti-tax pledge.

Norquist appeared to take no offense Thursday afternoon.

“Boehner is wise: ‘Our conf. is opposed to tax hikes because we believe that tax hikes will hurt our economy and put Americans out of work,’” he said via Twitter.

As The Washington Post’s Lori Montgomery has reported, as of last summer all but 13 of 288 Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill had signed Norquist’s pledge not to raise taxes.

Democrats have increasingly ramped up their focus on Norquist as a special bipartisan “supercommittee” nears its Nov. 23 deadline to draft a far-reaching debt-reduction plan. They are arguing that Norquist has wielded his political clout to ensure that nearly all Republicans are opposed to any plan that would include tax increases.

In remarks on the Senate floor on Wednesday, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) charged that Republicans “are terrified to violate the infamous Grover Norquist tax pledge, even though they know it’s the right thing to do.”

“They are in thrall to a man whose singular focus is keeping taxes low for the very wealthy, no matter what the effect on this nation,” Reid said, according to his prepared remarks. “They fear his political retribution.”

Norquist was on Capitol Hill Thursday morning for an event on energy subsidies with Reps. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) and Mike Pompeo (R-Kansas). It was his second such event in recent months.

Norquist fired back this week at Reid and other Democratic critics via Twitter.

“Hey Harry Reid: if I became a Buddhist monk and moved to Himalayas no pledge taker would help you raise taxes. They Promised their voters,” Norquist tweeted on Tuesday. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/2chambers/post/boehner-calls-grove
r-norquist-some-random-person/2011/11/03/gIQAidcviM_blog.html HIMSELF signed the pledge, and there are plenty of photos of him and Norquist together, so to say that is the height of...well, "sideways lying" if you will. He didn't answer the questions, he sidestepped them, but calling Norquist a "random person" is coming about as close to a lie as you can get.

If anyone has forgotten Norquist, here's a reminder:

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The most powerful figure in today's Republican Party is not John Boehner or Mitch McConnell. It is not Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan. It is not even Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin.

It is, of course, Grover Norquist, the man with The Pledge.

Norquist, who has never held elected office, is the founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform, a group whose pledge not to raise taxes under any circumstances has now been signed by hundreds of Republican candidates and officials at both state and national levels.

And they do mean "any circumstances." Enormous budget deficits? No. A country at war? Nope. Famine and plague? Sorry.

Our grandmothers kidnapped and threatened with death until and unless we raise taxes, as Norquist was asked recently by Stephen Colbert? Well, answered the unflappable Norquist, we always have our memories and our photographs.

(Colbert was being characteristically satiric. There appeared to be nothing satiric about the response.)

I want to set aside for now the political and economic wisdom of raising or not raising taxes and focus instead on an even more fundamental question: How prudent is it to take an irrevocable pledge about how to govern before one begins the actual work of governing?

How wise is it to remove from the legislative toolbox one of the most important tools before one knows what particular challenges one will face?

How many employers in any industry would hire someone into a leadership position who declared, prior to beginning work, that he or she would under no circumstances employ a commonly used strategy or compromise with those with whom he or she disagreed?

Would a retailer hire a manager who asserted that he would never under any circumstances raise prices?

Would a manufacturer hire a vice president who insisted that under no conditions would layoffs be permissible?

Would anyone hire a person who insisted that sacrificing absolutism for the common welfare was defeat?

Even the most basic primers on leadership note that the ability to listen, the ability to learn and the willingness to compromise are among the essential characteristics of any successful leader.

Many of these newcomers to public office appear also to believe that the mere fact of being elected constitutes a "mandate" for how they should subsequently act -- as if the business of governing ended rather than began with being chosen for office. More at http://www.startribune.com/opinion/otherviews/125245319.html

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"Random person"? Is he fucking kidding us?!