THE STATE
GROVER NORQUIST HUMBLY DENIES PULLING S.C. POLITICIANS' STRINGS
Published on: 09/19/2004
Section: EDITORIAL
Edition: FINAL
Page: D2
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor

"OUR GOAL is to inflict as much pain as possible," Grover Norquist told National Journal of his campaign to defeat Gov. Bob Riley's effort to restructure Alabama's tax system to benefit the state's poor people. "It is not good enough to win; it has to be a painful and devastating defeat. We're sending a message here. It is like when the king would take his opponent's head and stick it on a pike for everyone to see."

He was talking about defeating a conservative Christian politician who was acting to address a situation in his state that he saw as inconsistent with the Gospels.

When the head of Americans for Tax Reform came to visit our editorial board last week, he passed out copies of that and two other published profiles of him. Imagine being so full of yourself that you hand strangers these nuggets about yourself:

n The Journal citing others quoting Mr. Norquist: "We are trying to change the tones in the state capitals - and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship."

n Stephen Moore of the Club for Growth describing his ally in Mother Jones: "From the moment he gets up to the moment he gets to bed, he thinks, 'How am I going to hurt the other team?' "

n The Washington Post, on what Mr. Norquist told a liberal Harvard classmate at a reunion: "For 40 years we fought a two-front war against the Soviet Union and state-ism. Now we can turn all our time and energy to crushing you. With the Soviet Union, it was just business. With you, it's personal."

n The Post, quoting a rubber stamp he keeps on his desk: "Find Him and Kill Him."

He also said a few provocative things in his meeting with us. Take, for instance, his scoffing at conservatives who want to do away with the National Endowment for the Arts: "You know, it's like a hundred million dollars, and the National Endowment for the Arts is actually extremely helpful to the conservative movement because they fund 'Piss Christ' and irritate the hell out of taxpayers and remind them why they're Republicans. And if they were to stop this, there would be fewer taxpayer activists."

His pal, Bush strategist Karl Rove, described him to The Post as "an impresario of the center-right." He holds court at every-Wednesday gatherings in his Washington office. The S.C. Policy Council's Ed McMullen, who attends whenever he's in the capital, says other regulars include Reps. Jim DeMint and Joe Wilson and their staffs.

More relevantly to us, he is the man behind the no-new-taxes pledge that has been signed by President Bush, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Gov. Mark Sanford, Rep. DeMint and other Republicans in our House delegation, 15 members of the S.C. Senate and 51 members of the S.C. House, including Speaker David Wilkins. He's the guy some leading S.C. politicians check with before supporting tax proposals.

For all of this, he is an unimposing figure, until you look into his eyes - and hear his words. He's 47, but doesn't look it. He's a cherubic little round-faced guy who sports a brown beard that fails to make him look older. With his youthful, gray-free plumage, his rosy cheeks and the zealot gleam from behind his spectacles, he reminds me of Saul of Tarsus before the trip to Damascus. I could seem him holding the coats of the men who stoned Stephen - if Stephen were a liberal.

His purpose in visiting us, along with S.C. Association of Taxpayers leader Don Weaver, is, as near as I can tell, to persuade us to stop hammering S.C. pols who sign his loyalty oath.

(We believe elected representatives should go into office prepared to engage in debate with open minds. They should not tie their hands in advance with an oath never to do one thing or always to do another. This out-of-state group's pledge is used as an excuse by our change-averse lawmakers not to reform our unfair and ineffective tax system.)

The message of Messrs. Norquist and Weaver was that this pledge is not to some Washington megalomaniac, but to the voters of South Carolina.

"The pledge is made to the citizens, the voters of the district. It's not made to me; it's not made to SCAT," says Mr. Norquist, in a poor imitation of a humble man.

So how come powerful people are so cowed by him? Mr. Norquist knows that they are.

"I can understand why somebody would go, Grover this, that, or the other thing. . . . They do, I know, I get the clippings." But he insists: "They're afraid of me talking to the taxpayers of their district. That's what they're afraid of." The pledge is "made to the citizens. . . . That's why it's powerful. But it's also powerful because it has a track record. And to the extent that Americans for Tax Reform and SCAT highlight and raise the visibility of the pledge, that's what makes it more expensive to violate."

"You know, and the voters know that you know that if you break it, you're toast," says Mr. Norquist, who owns the toaster.

He speaks with a confidence in the inevitable triumph of his ideas much as Marxists used to speak of the historical dialectic.

On school "choice," he affably admonishes us: "You can't hold back the dam on this one. This is coming. . . . And you will be able to look at other states and watch what happens."

In his publication, The Tax Reformer, he wrote of a candidate for Virginia House speaker who "refused to sign the TAXPAYER PROTECTION PLEDGE," and was "defeated by Pledge-signing Republican Jeff Fortenberry." He said Virginia lawmakers who voted for a recent tax increase "tended to be older Republicans . . . who did not have political futures."

"There is a trend here."

I see a different trend. One of the 51 S.C. House members whom Mr. Norquist lists as a Pledge-signer - Rep. Kenny Bingham - says he did so the first time he ran, but has refused to do so subsequently.

Three others on the list - Reps. Rick Quinn, Larry Koon and Teddy Trotter - were defeated in the June primaries. Both Nikki Haley (who beat Mr. Koon) and Nathan Ballentine (who ousted Mr. Quinn) have refused to sign the pledge. So have other young up- and-comers like Rep. Ted Pitts.

Perhaps resistance to Grover Norquist is not useless.

Write to Mr. Warthen at bwarthen@thestate.com.