Grover Norquist in New York Times Magazine This Sunday Defends 'Nut-Job' McCain

While the cover story on Chris Matthews has already drawn attention to this coming Sunday's New York Times Magazine, a Q & A with tax-cut guru Grover G. Norquist should not be overlooked. Norquist reveals that he is now working with John McCain, after calling him a 'nut-job" just three years ago, and in return McCain "reciprocates by sending at least one person to each of our Center-Right meetings."

Norquist now admits that labeling McCain a "gun-grabbing, tax-increasing Bolshevik" was "an overstatement." At the same 2005 College Republicans gathering he referred to McCain as "the nut-job from Arizona."

Asked why McCain once opposed Bush tax cuts but now favors making them permanent, Norquist explains, "He was unhappy about losing the presidential nomination in 2000. He was very mad at Bush. He was mad at me, too."

When Deborah Solomon asks, "You're saying he [McCain] opposed the tax cuts out of spite?" Norquist replies, "Out of understandable pique."

He also argues that the Iraq war has not hurt the economy and reveals that his mother was the town tax assessor in Weston, Mass. When Solomon complains that her children will have to pay for the current budget deficits, Norquist answers, "Oh, good, then my kids will be off the hook."

Norquist has no children.

After the 2005 "nut job" comment, Mark Salter, a senior adviser for McCain, issued a statement that said, "John McCain hasn't spent five seconds in his entire life thinking about Grover Norquist. He's not going to start now."

Greg Mitchell's new book is So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq.It has been hailed by our own Arianna, Bill Moyers, and Glenn Greenwald, and features a preface by Bruce Springsteen.

http://www.amazon.com/So-Wrong-Long-Pundits-President-Failed/dp/1402756577/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194834498&sr=1-1

Comments

[mellene]

Anyone who will defend this goof ball, needs to have their head examined. McCain will only dig our hole deeper and there will be no escaping America's fall like the Roman empire.

[BigBen]

Has it ever crossed the mind of the left wing liberals that if they stopped name calling they might be more compelling?

[zippywpinhead]

Let me get this straight- John McCain chose to oppose those tax cuts "Out of understandable pique."? He based important policy positions on his temper? I fail to see how that is any better than being a flip flopping hypocrite...

[JScott]

Nutjobs stick together so what else is new.

[Snerdgronk]

You know, Grove(R) my practice di(R)ty politics, but he always smells so nice and clean ... Must be all that time he spends in the bathtub, p(R)acticing!

Snerd

[Snerdgronk]

I've heard that Grove(R) has written a whiter paper on the economy for McCain entitled, "A Bathtub (R)uns Through It"

Snerd

[REJames50]

McCain Wins?
The RNC claims "internal polling" (wishful thinking?) says John McCain leads Hillary in a potential head-to-head match-up by 11%, Obama by 9, and the racket coming out of my BS claxon is distracting.
Isn"t this the same Republican leadership that claimed, right up to the election in 2006, that the GOP would fare well that day, according to Karl Rove, legendary right-wing political guru? In that election not one seat was wrested from a Democrat in 458 Congressional elections, for the first time since Lincoln was alive. This miscalculation is as egregious as the missing WMD, if not as lethal. These same pollsters said Rudy Giuliani was the leading Republican candidate just last December, as "America"s mayor," with humiliation and one delegate, total, ended his chase 1200 shy of the nomination, then he dropped out of sight.
True, I never thought the country would either elect or reelect Reagan, a mediocre leader who got his ideology out of the National Review, with Bill Buckley being Reagan"s brain. But, McCain is the designated heir-apparent of an oft-despised George Bush, with a 28% approval rating, a man whom Ralph Nader says is "historically illiterate," a war criminal, and whose detractors are characteristically more enthusiastic than his defenders, while 81% of us say the country is on the wrong track. "Those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind," a harvest that will ripen come November.

[Snerdgronk]

REJ: "...These same pollsters said Rudy Giuliani was the leading Republican candidate just last December, as "America"s mayor," with humiliation and one delegate "

SG: Apparently when it comes to connecting with the public, these pollsters lack 'inter-operability'

Snerd

[tc399]

There won't be anything left to win unless Obama can hold off the end until be pull together again.

The strongest connect on a ship is the anchor chain. If the ship needs to drop the anchor and weather a storm, the chain can't break and the anchor can't fail or the ship is lost as well as most of the crew and passengers. If the ship is lost, the Captain bears the entire responsibility and traditionally went down with his ship by way of apology and admission of his failure at the helm.

Now let's call the US Dollar an anchor. The biggest, strongest, brightest one ever made. Everyone else tries to make their anchors as good as ours, but we have the best! So those who can ship their goods on our ship because we have the biggest and best ship, protected by the biggest and best anchor. Things have been going so well for so long that the board of directors and the shippers of goods really aren't too concerned about who is at the helm of the ship. It's the Biggest and Best. And it's name is the Titanic.=

[ljsfolly]

I now call McCain "No-Brain McCain" as he has made so many blunders and has misspoken many times. His you can call a "misspeak" as he has not one clue about what he is talking about. He mixes Shia and Sunni and Iran and Iraq a lot. He hasn't made any speeches where he has made consistant sense and I often wonder if there is a teleprompter if he can read it or he is just going off on tangents that only make sense to him. I also think it is sad for a person called a hero because of his time as a POW and his service in Vietnam bombing all those people, to have come down to such a level and the republicans are using him as a nominee. And yet the odd part of it is the republicans will support him like they all have some kind of good sense because they can use his past history and his following bush Jr like a puppy and Bush Sr like he might have been not so lost but had some brain cells still firing. Sad but also is sad as being a dem I am having to watch Hillary run until John Mac migt have a chance. After almost 8 years of a war nut and knowing how unhinged he is to vote in someone with demetia will prove what point to the world? It won't save our country as he likes wars too.

[vat6948]

Grover, must have slapped around allot as a kid. He's now the leader of the " lower tax, small govt.,and big corporation part of the GOP. Poor Grover, no one told him his date to the party (Jack Abrahamoff ) is in jail, anyway Grover, you had on "BROWN SHOES" with your tux.

[realpolitic]

Norquist supports tax cuts in the face of unrelenting warfare. He would recommend tax cuts to cure cancer or illiteracy.

[SEQUOIABISON]

Norquist would sell his own mother if he could get a tax break.

[MajorKong]

It goes to show just how far right the GOP mainstream is these days if they're calling John McCain a Bolshevik.

[SamEllison]

McCain in bed with Grover Norquist? He has sold his soul to be POTUS.

[noneIn2008]

A cheap price for POTUS, if you have no soul.

[richw23]

It's probably been said many times, but I'm beginning to think very few great men are good and the lumpen will seldom allow a good man to become great. Hopefull Obama is the exception that proves the rule.

Norquist is neither great nor good - but he brings the point to mind.

[PioneerKing]

Grover will of course get on the McCain bandwagon just as all of the republicans will; regardless of the purported conservative values that the republicans love to claim they believe in.

[wiseapple]

I wouldn't call him a tax-cut guru. It gives the impression that he has an enlightened expertise in the tax-cut field. He has never shown a hint of such to me. He is just a self-serving, supply-side simpleton who wants to shirk his societal duties in order to enjoy 'the good life'. Oh yeah, and a lobbyist for the tobacco industry.

There is no evidence that the tax-cuts have generated the same levels of federal revenue that would have been achieved without the tax cuts. That is why our federal debt has been rampantly increasing during the Bush-Whacked Years.

[LeoMarvin]

I realize a lot of people here strongly disagree, but I think that underneath all the stupid, arrogant, partisan, dishonest, Constitution-bending, incompetent bungling that guided our invasion and occupation of Iraq, Bush, Cheney, Wolfewitz and the bunch honestly believed they were trying to do what was best for the country. Grover Norquist, on the other hand, is just a mean-spirited, selfish little prick.

[Nyland8]

I might suggest that even if your assertion were correct about their intent, at the end of the first year, when it became clear that their plan was failing more and more each day, they all became mean-spirited, selfish little pricks ...

... and remained that way day after day, week after week, month after month, year after blood fucking year until this day. To witness first hand the decimation of our military, the rape of our treasury and the loss of our traditional allies in the world, and to do nothing about it after all this time, is to qualify with high honors for the title mean-spirited, selfish little pricks.

Just a thought.

8

[Bluedog12]

If he has time for Mccain why hasn't Grover visited his old pal Jack Abrahamoff in the Federal pen?

[rudyinbama]

Wasn't there some Grover Norquist - Jack Abramoff connection?

[carfino]

You people need to look for the humor with Herr Nordquist.

This chap and most others of a similar right wing shading are essentially adults who never where exposed to the simple lessons one learns in grade school about how to get along with other people....... to the point of lunacy. They think they get to live in a society where they get all sorts of benefits of that society, such as police and fire protection, defense, food and drug laws, banking laws, or the simple pleasure of driving down a newly paved road, etc for free....or at least free for them.

Fast forward to Senator McBush...here's a guy who has absolutely no clue about macro economics. The only thing he's ever excelled in has been taking money from lobbyists and doing their bidding.....read Keating Five, or Paxson Communications for a brief window.

He'll buy into Nordquists version of Voodoo Economics in a heart beat because somehow he thinks those people will somehow run interefence for him and his clueless views.

Watch McBush flipping and flopping all over the map embracing old political enemies to try to get elected. Here's where the real humor is to be had.

[illinoisan]

I hope Norquist employs the services of a driver. I'd hate to meet him at an intersection regulated by one of those Bolshevik stop lights.

[irishgawdess]

"free riders"

[westwind]

Norquist lives in a childless world of ideology, untainted by the consequences of implementing his Ayn Randian fantasies.

Having children would probably not make him any more human-like, though -- Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld et al obviously don't care what hardship and struggle their descendents will have to endure because of their crazy ideas.

[munkeyfuk]

You must be kidding, westwind, to suggest that any offspring of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld will EVER experience ANY hardship whatsoever.
That has been the point of the respective family men, to steal so much that their descendants can live a life befitting royalty, which they have become, due to our inaction. If you doubt it, check their tax returns.
Nothing crazy about stealing every thing that isn't nailed down, at least if you aren't the victim of the theft.

[schatsie]

Let's face it Grover would like to do away with the Income tax altogether and stick all the bills to the working class stiffs....