Grover Norquist is a private
American citizen who has convinced a significant number of
lawmakers that their careers will be better off if they promise
their constituents not to confiscate more of their money through
taxes. Against the backdrop of fiscal cliff negotiations that
steadfastly
refuse to contemplate addressing the single biggest cause of
the cliff-inducing deficit–the grotesque expansion of the federal
government–this is how Norquist is being described as of late:

David Horsey, Los Angeles Times:

Grover Norquist, GOP ayatollah, is losing his grip on the party
[...]

Ayatollahs seem to just appoint themselves and then start
enforcing their own brand of orthodoxy. Grover Norquist has been
doing that in the Republican Party for years.

Slate‘s Jacob Weisberg, on
Twitter:

Honecker, Ceaucescu, Mubarak.. Norquist

Frank Bruni, New York Times:

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Representative Peter King of New
York…stressed that the country’s current fiscal woes trumped vows
made in less debt-ridden times, and over on “Fox News Sunday,”
Senator John McCain signaled a receptiveness to new revenue,
another dagger to Norquist’s dark heart. [...]

It’s as if some spell has at long last been broken, and the
formerly bewitched villagers are rising up to defy their evil
overlord and insist on the possibility of life and even mirth
without a deduction for corporate jets.

Christopher Moraff, Philadelphia magazine:

The Rise and Fall of Anti-Tax Terrorist Grover Norquist

Daryl
Rowland, Huffington Post:

In the same way that McCarthyism now largely overshadows the
early days of the Eisenhower administration, the W. Bush and Obama
years will be seen as the stage on which Grover Norquist’s
domination of domestic policy took place. [...]

McCarthy was of course a public figure, while Norquist has been
largely a stealth tyrant, in the glorious tradition of figures
like Cardinal Richelieu or Rasputin.

FTR & FWIW, I think Norquist’s success has paradoxically
undermined his oft-stated goal of reducing the size of government,
because it has given Republicans cheap cover on looking fiscally
conservative even though almost none of them have been serious
about the hard part of that equation, which is actually
cutting stuff. I further think it has incentivized the
Swiss-cheesification of the tax code, with preferential, distorting
tax treatment doled out to favored constituencies and then given
immediate de facto protection from a pledge that only accepts
deduction-eliminations when coupled with overall rate reductions. I
think the
mortgage interest deduction is a plague on our lives and should
be junked.

But comparing a citizen’s attempts to keep tax rates low with
the behavior of murderous dictators reveals much more about the
ideology of the analogists than of their target. There is a crucial
distinction between a private individual attempting to restrain
democratic government and a public tyrant using unrestrained
government to suppress democratic individuals.

For some interesting Reason interviews with Grover
Norquist, including his repeated (and arguable!) assertions that
it’s bad to get worked up about deficits, start backward from this

2011 conversation with Peter Suderman.