Norquist vs. the Citizens of the U.S.?

If Congress cannot get past their present income tax stalemate, the Bush tax cuts will expire on January 1, 2013 raising income taxes for everyone. The Democrats would like to extend the cuts for middle and lower income Americans for one year while ending the cuts for the wealthy. Republicans, who signed the Norquist I-will-never-raise-taxes pledge want to make the tax cuts permanent. This week, Democrats offered a new solution to this conundrum. They offered to allow all the tax cuts to expire on January 1 and would then immediately vote to re-instate the tax cuts for those in the lower and middle income brackets.

Republican Senate Minority Leader, Mitch O’Connell said “This isn’t an economic agenda. It’s an ideological crusade”

what eye thynk: I would call the Democratic plan a convoluted last ditch effort, but an “ideological crusade”? No. 

Mr. O'Connell's comment is even more absurd when you remember that it is coming from the man who, in 2008, said that his party’s main objective would be to defeat President Obama. Not to improve the economy, not to seek an end to a baseless war, not to protect the health of American citizens nor safeguard the environment, not to do anything constructive -- simply to defeat President Obama.

Also consider that this is the party that boasts that over one thousand Republicans, (including Mitt Romney), have signed Grover Norquist’s I-will-never-raise-taxes pledge and have bull-headedly stuck with it even though economists on both sides of the aisle have said we need to generate more tax revenue if we are to have any hope of reducing our national debt.  Now, that is what I would call an "ideological crusade".

Recently some Republicans have voiced their regret at having signed up to be one of Norquist’s groupies. Taking a cue from ex-Florida governor Jeb Bush, (“I don’t believe you outsource your principles and convictions…”), Lindsey Graham, Republican Senator from South Carolina, has said he intends to attempt to convince his fellow Republicans that the time for compromise on tax issues is here. Unfortunately, many of the congressional Republicans whose names are on Norquist’s list fear reprisals from their own party members if they go back on their pledge.

What really angers me about this pledge business is that the same Republicans who are so intent on remaining loyal to Mr. Norquist seem to have forgotten that they also swore an oath of office when they became a member of Congress; and nowhere in that oath does it mention swearing allegiance to one man’s dogma. The United States is supposed to be a country governed by the people, for the people---not by the people, for Grover Norquist.

The Democratic plan, (which, frankly, makes me a little nervous; I mean who is to say that those middle and lower income tax cuts will be reinstated as promised?), gives the Republicans a way to avoid actually voting to raise taxes on the wealthy, allotting them some cover from those who would take to the media to renounce them as pledge breakers. It is sad that governing has come to this -- that in order to accomplish anything, we have to find a way around a self-engendered roadblock.

Mitch O’Connell, who seems to have appointed himself Grover Norquist’s lieutenant/enforcer, needs to look at his own party when he begins throwing around words like “ideological crusade”. Democrats have bent themselves into pretzel-like contortions to assist the Republicans in avoiding any Norquist blowback. Now it is up to the Republicans to decide where their allegiance should rest-- with Norquist or with the country they promised to serve.