Grover Norquist Has Something New He Wants To Drown In A Bathtub... Bad Republicans

Alan Grayson won his primary yesterday, of course; he had no opponent. But he did a lot of advertising... most of it to remind Democrats and independents how truly awful is the policy agenda Todd Long embraces. In doing so he boosted Long's favorability among right-wingers which Grayson probably was totally happy about. Long is the ideal candidate anyone would want to run against. He was banned from the Millenia Mall, Orlando's biggest, for drunk and disorderly conduct; he was arrested in a school yard 200 miles from his home, passed out on the sidewalk and drunk. We he came to, he claimed he had no idea how he got there. And stuff like that is nothing compared to his crackpot agenda. Although the biggest newspaper in Central Florida, the Sentinel endorsed also-ran (barely) and failed screenwriter Julius Melendez and the Florida Republican Establishment was backing tax-and-spend-conservative Osceola Board of County Commissioner/tap-dancer John Q. Quiñones, each of whom outraised Long (who had $3,511 in cash on hand on July 25th), it was Long who triumphed. Something tells me it was actually Grayson who triumphed... in both primaries.

Todd Long- 12,513 (47%)
John Quiñones- 7,479 (28%)
Julius Melendez- 3.973 (15%)
Mark Oxner- 2,506 (9%)

Immediately after Long was declared the victor, Grayson issued a short press release: “The November election will be a referendum on Todd Long’s plan to give our Social Security money to Wall Street and dismantle Medicare. The only way to defeat that plan is to vote against Todd Long.” Perhaps the coup de grâce for the hapless Quiñones was a radio ad that ran for a day and a half-- courtesy of Grayson, quoting Republican anti-tax fanatic Grover Norquist denouncing him. I don't have the actual ad, but Norquist's anti-tax website tells the whole story of Quiñones' political obituary.

Today, the John Quiñones for Congress campaign said that they will not be signing the Taxpayer Protection Pledge in his bid for the GOP nomination in Florida’s 9th Congressional District.  Republican candidates Julius Melendez and Mark Oxner have signed the Pledge.

Without a concrete written promise to taxpayers in the district, Quiñones is leaving the door open to higher taxes. For voters familiar with Quiñones’s record as a state legislator, this may not come as a surprise.

State Senator Quiñones voted in support of transportation bill, SB 1350, that included higher taxes. The bill targeted tourists by imposing a $2-a-day tax on rental car customers. Then Republican Governor Jeb Bush vetoed the legislation, noting that the “taxes will be paid disparately by tourists visiting Florida, consequently creating taxation without representation on a large scale.”

Perhaps even more troubling than his support of tax hikes as a Florida legislator are the looming tax hikes that America faces at the beginning of next year.  On January 1, 2013, America faces the largest tax increases in US history.

The cost of Taxmageddon on Florida taxpayers is estimated at over $34 billion in higher taxes. Although Quiñones would not take office until after January 1, the risk of giving him a seat at the negotiating table should leave Florida taxpayers scared.

“The voters in Florida have a right to know where a candidate stands on the issues before electing them to Congress,” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. “It’s only logical to assume that if Quiñones won’t sign the Pledge then he has plans to raise taxes.”

“The promises that Quiñones makes about creating jobs, cutting spending, and restoring fiscal conservatism to Washington mean little without the backing of a concrete written promise to oppose higher taxes. Only by signing the Pledge, can Florida taxpayers be certain that Quiñones has learned the error of his ways on higher taxes.”

And Grover was just as useful on an entirely different front this week: bipartisan-- better known as "conservative consensus"-- warmongering. Grover is sounding the alarm about Buck McKeon's deranged anti-sequetration lame duck session compromise. McKeon refuses to give up the pork for his Military Industrial Complex campaign donors, even if it means destroying the civilian economy. He voted for sequestration and now he doesn't want to face up to the consequences... or do something reasonable about them. McKeon is beneath Norquist's dignity, though... so he went after McKeon allies Romney and Ryan. If Norquist can round up enough Members and team up with the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the sequestration disaster can be averted.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, his would-be vice president Paul Ryan, and defense hawks in Congress are wrong that savings can't be found in the U.S. defense budget, according to Grover Norquist, the influential president of Americans for Tax Reform, who said that he will fight using any new revenues to keep military spending high.

"We can afford to have an adequate national defense which keeps us free and safe and keeps everybody afraid to throw a punch at us, as long as we don't make some of the decisions that previous administrations have, which is to over extend ourselves overseas and think we can run foreign governments," Norquist said Monday at an event at the Center for the National Interest, formerly the Nixon Center.

But Ryan's views are at odds with those of Norquist and other budget hawks, who argue that defense budgets can be trimmed. Ryan's budget plan provides for increasing military spending and doesn't suggest any tradeoff or specific defense reforms.

"Other people need to lead the argument on how can conservatives lead a fight to have a serious national defense without wasting money," Norquist said. "I wouldn't ask Ryan to be the reformer of the defense establishment."

Avoiding $54 billion of arbitrary defense cuts next year as a result of the Budget Control Act of 2011, in what's known as "sequestration," has been a focus of Romney's campaign and one of his main points of contrast with President Obama. Romney's views align him with defense hawks who are leading that effort on the Hill, such as House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-CA) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who support closing tax loopholes and deductions to avoid sequestration.

"You will get serious conversation from the advocates of Pentagon spending when they understand ‘here's the dollar amount, now make decisions," Norquist said. "They want to argue you have to raise taxes-- you can't solve the problem."

Norquist vowed to fight any effort to use the money saved by tax reform to pay for military spending or to avoid the sequester.

"You have guys saying ‘can we steal all your deductions and credits and give it to the appropriators,' and then when we get tax reform there will be no tax reform," Norquist said, referring to defense
hawks. "The idea is that you are going to raise taxes on people to not think through defense priorities."

But Norquist predicted that the defense hawks will lose the battle inside the GOP. The ultimate decision-makers, he said, would be the heads of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, not the respective Armed Services Committees.

"Here's the good news. There's a very small number of them," Norquist said about the defense hawks. "The handful of [Republicans] that support that are either not coming back or they don't know yet that they are not coming back."

The Pentagon wastes money on bloated weapons systems, bases, and programs that are protected by politicians for parochial reasons, he said. Norquist said the defense hawks were not serious about saving money or reforming the Pentagon.

"If you're not looking like you're trying, nobody wants to help you, starting with me... There's a lack of seriousness," he said. "The guys who are saying ‘we're not going to cut Pentagon spending but we want to raise taxes,' they aren't making a sale... They are saying it's not a tax increase. It is, it is, it is."

Norquist said he believes in a non-interventionist foreign policy that eschews nation-building, much like the one former president George W. Bush campaigned on before he decided to invade Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Bush decided to be the mayor of Baghdad rather than the president of the United States. He decided to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan rather than reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That had tremendous consequences," he said. "Rather than doing Doha [the trade round], we did Kabul."

Romney has promised to keep defense spending at 4 percent of U.S. GDP, but Norquist doesn't believe that defense spending should be pegged to the size of the U.S. economy or any other arbitrary number. He argued that the Republican Party needs to reexamine the actual defense needs
and then work from there to determine how much to spend.

"Richard Nixon said that America's national defense needs are set in Moscow, meaning that we wouldn't have to spend so much if they weren't shooting at us," he said. "The guys who followed didn't notice that the Soviet Union disappeared."