Grover Glenn Norquist (born October 19, 1956), the president of the noted anti-tax lobbying group Americans for Tax Reform, is a well-connected conservative activist with close ties to business and to the media.

Contents

1 Public life 2 Biography 3 See also 4 Quotations 5 Sources 6 External links

Public life

Norquist was one of the so-called "Gang of Five" identified in Nina Easton 's 2000 book by that name, which gives a history of leaders of the modern conservative movement. He has been described as "a thumb-in-the-eye radical rightist" (The Nation), and "Tom Paine crossed with Lee Atwater plus just a soupçon of Madame Defarge " (P.J. O'Rourke). Norquist has been noted for his widely quoted quip: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." The pledge of "no new taxes" that many Republican legislators have signed was his project.

According to the critical website MediaTransparency.Org, Norquist is "adept at media appearances ... writes a monthly politics column for the American Spectator magazine, and frequently speaks at regional and state think tanks of the conservative movement. He is also well connected with large-scale U.S. business interests, having served as economist and chief speech writer for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (1983-1984)."[1] http://www.mediatransparency.org/people/grover_norquist.htm

Shortly after Bill Clinton was elected president of the United States in 1992, Norquist began hosting a weekly get-together of conservatives in his Washington office to coordinate activities and strategy. "We were sort of like the Mensheviks after the Russian Revolution," recalls Marshall Wittmann , who attended the first meeting as a representative of the Christian Coalition. The "Wednesday Meeting" of Norquist's Leave Us Alone Coalition has become an important hub of conservative political organizing. George W. Bush began sending a representative to the Wednesday Meeting even before he formally announced his candidacy for president. "Now a White House aide attends each week," reported USA Today in June 2001. "Vice President Cheney sends his own representative. So do GOP congressional leaders, right-leaning think tanks, conservative advocacy groups and some like-minded K Street lobbyists. The meeting has been valuable to the White House because it is the political equivalent of one-stop shopping. By making a single pitch, the administration can generate pressure on members of Congress, calls to radio talk shows, and political buzz from dozens of grassroots organizations. It also enables the White House to hear conservatives vent in private — and to respond — before complaints fester."[2] http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2001-06-01-grover.htm

"Cutting the government in half in one generation is both an ambitious and reasonable goal," Norquist stated in May 2000. "If we work hard we will accomplish this and more by 2025. Then the conservative movement can set a new goal. I have a recommendation: To cut government in half again by 2050."[3] http://www.heritage.org/about/community/insider/2000/may00/welcome.html

Even within conservative circles, he has made some enemies, possibly due to what some describe as a combative personality. Columnist Tucker Carlson harshly criticized him as a "mean-spirited, humorless, dishonest little creep ... the leering, drunken uncle everyone else wishes would stay home."[4] http://slate.msn.com/id/3654/entry/23930

On the other hand, Norquist's page on the web site of Americans for Tax Reform includes laudatory quotes about him from former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and from columnist P. J. O'Rourke.

In addition to heading Americans for Tax Reform, Norquist is currently on the board of directors of the National Rifle Association and the American Conservative Union, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and chairman emeritus of the Islamic Institute .

Biography

Norquist grew up in Weston, Massachusetts. Although he is best known as the head of Americans for Tax Reform, his introduction to conservative politics was rooted in the anti-Soviet rhetoric of the Cold War. "I was actually a foreign-policy conservative first," he told an interviewer in 1998. His political leanings were cemented at the age of eleven by reading anti-Communist tracts such as Masters of Deceit by J. Edgar Hoover and Witness by Whittaker Chambers.[5] http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m1571/n3_v14/20174381/p1/article.jhtml He received a B.A. from Harvard College, which he attended from 1974 to 1978, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School (1979–1981).[6] http://watch.pair.com/database2.html

After leaving graduate school, Norquist became executive director of both the National Taxpayers Union and the national College Republicans organization, holding both positions until 1983. He founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985. In 1994 he worked with Newt Gingrich and the Heritage Foundation to draft the Contract with America.

Norquist has also served as an economic advisor to Angola UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi and was once registered with the Department of Justice as a foreign agent of Angola.[7] http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/fara/fara2nd97/COUNTRY/ANGOLA.HTM#5061

See also

• "Starve-the-beast"
• Council on American-Islamic Relations

Quotations

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations by or about Grover Norquist

• "We are trying to change the tones in the state capitals -- and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship."
  • quoted in John Aloysius Farrell, "Rancor becomes top D.C. export: GOP leads charge in ideological war," Denver Post, May 26, 2003 [8] http://tanque.org/peptide/norquist.html

• "And we've had four more years pass where the age cohort that is most Democratic and most pro-statist, are those people who turned 21 years of age between 1932 and 1952--Great Depression, New Deal, World War II--Social Security, the draft--all that stuff. That age cohort is now between the ages of 70 and 90 years old, and every year 2 million of them die. So 8 million people from that age cohort have passed away since the last election; that means, net, maybe 1 million Democrats have disappeared--and even the Republicans in that age group. [...] You know, some Bismarck, German thing, okay? Very un-American. Very unusual for America. The reaction to Great Depression, World War II, and so on: Centralization--not as much centralization as the rest of the world got, but much more than is usual in America. We've spent a lot of time dismantling some of that and moving away from that level of regimentation: getting rid of the draft."
  • interview with Pablo Pardo from the Spanish periodical El Mundo as transcribed from the recording by The Weekly Standard [9] http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/695jwmmb.asp?p
    g=1

• "Alexander Hamilton has been on the $10 since 1928, he's been well honored by the country, he was a great Secretary of the Treasury. But of all the people on the currency, the only one who isn't a president."
  • interview with CNN's Judy Woodruff on the possibility of putting Ronald Reagan on the $10 bill, June 8, 2004

Sources

• Norquist biography http://www.atr.org/staff/ggnbio.html , Americans for Tax Reform web site
• Norquist biography http://www.aoctp.org/gnorquist.shtml , Association of Concerned Taxpayers

External links

• Disinfopedia: Grover Norquist http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Grover_Norquist
• Disinfopedia: the In Defense of Freedom Coalition http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=In_Defense_of_Freedom_Coalition .
• Grover Norquist profile, NNDB http://www.nndb.com/people/482/000049335/ .

• A lecture http://knight.stanford.edu/lectures/knight/1997/index.html given by Elizabeth Drew at the Ninth Annual Knight Lecture, Stanford University, May 5, 1997.
• Critical article http://www.commondreams.org/news2001/0502-13.htm from CommonDreams.Org concerning Norquist's proposed reforms of the medical industry
• Testimony by Norquist http://judiciary.senate.gov/oldsite/te090701si-norquist.htm to the Senate Judiciary Committee, September 7, 2001.
• Franklin Foer, "Fevered Pitch http://tanque.org/peptide/norquist.rad.html ", and article from The New Republic, November 12, 2001, alleging ties between Norquist and radical Islamist elements.
• An article http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york031903.asp from the National Review, March 19, 2003, describing a clash between Norquist and Frank Gaffney over Norquist's alleged ties to radical Islam.
• An article http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-insnorquist061503jun15,0,7325314
  .story?coll=orl-opinion-headlines about Norquist in the Orlando Sentinel
• FEC complaint filed against Norquist http://www.citizensforethics.org/activities/20040204/ , 4 February 2004.

• Norquist's articles http://www.atr.org/opeds/index.html for the American Spectator, the American Enterprise Institute and other venues.
• Speeches and Testimony http://www.atr.org/speechtestimony/index.html by Grover Norquist and other ATR staff.
• Norquist interview http://reason.com/9702/fe.int.norquist.shtml with Reason Magazine , February 1997.
• transcript of an interview with Norquist http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_norquist.html on NOW with Bill Moyers.
• Government website from 1997 http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/fara/fara1st97/REGS/05061.HTM listing Grover Norquist as an agent of Jonas Savimbi's UNITA rebels in Angola and as an agent of the government of Seychelles who attempted to influence US Government policy in both of these nations.

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