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In light of my considerable ignorance about Norquist, I did some research. Below is an article about his ideas and his career from Insight on the News. Click here for article

Grover Norquist takes on the tyranny of federal taxation.(head of Americans for Tax Reform)(includes biographical information)(Interview)

Author/s: John Berlau

Issue: Jan 26, 1998

The founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform reamed his conservatism as a child anti since has given himself over to grass" roots activism as a Republican antitax policy advocate.

Ever since Republicans took control of Congress in 1994 and his long-time friend, Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, became House speaker, conservative antitax activist Grover Norquist has become increasingly prominent as a Republican idea and power broker. Most Republican political candidates at both the federal and state levels now sign the pledge promoted by Norquists group, Americans for Tax Reform, or ATR, to vote against tax increases. And every Wednesday, Norquist hosts a morning meeting of conservative policy wonks, lobbyists and congressional staffers to discuss strategies to move their agenda forward. He tries to unite conservatives of various stripes in what he calls the "Leave Us Alone" coalition.

Insight: How did you become a conservative?

Grover Norquist: I was actually a foreign-policy conservative first. The Weston, Mass., library sold off for a nickel each all of its old conservative books. So I got Witness by Whitaker Chambers for a nickel. I got I Led Three Lives by Herb Philbrick. I got Masters of Deceit about the Communists by [J. Edgar] Hoover. And I read them as an 11-year-old.

People come into the general conservative movement from different directions. I was first an anticommunist, but then as I learned economics I became an economic conservative. Just being an American makes you be in favor of freedom and against too much government, and if you think about it for long you realize that we've drifted away from that over the last several decades.

Insight: You've referred to conservatives as the "Leave Us Alone" coalition. How did you envision this?

GN: I was writing a book called Rock the House trying to explain how and why we took the Reagan coalition, the center right presidential majority which we've enjoyed since 1968, and drove it down into Congress. And what I was trying to get to is what is the central organizing principle of the center-right conservative coalition. And I would argue that everybody is in the room for many different reasons, but they're all in because on whatever issue that brings them to politics they wish to be left alone.

The gun owners -- such as the members of the National Rifle Association -- get involved in politics because they don't want their guns taken away. Homeschoolers come to politics because they want their children left alone. Tax activists come in because they don't want to be taxed out of existence. The smallbusiness and property-rights groups don't want to be regulated out of business, don't want their property taken away and their businesses expropriated by regulation or by taxes.

This doesn't mean that everybody in the conservative movement is a libertarian, but on the issue that motivates them they want to be left alone, they want the government away.

Insight: Some would say the Christian right is trying to impose an agenda and are not necessarily interested in "leaving us alone."

GN: You have to go back to the motivation. The Christian right did not get organized in 1963 when prayer was taken out of public schools. They didn't organize in 1973 with Roe vs. Wade [which legalized abortion]. They organized in 1978, 1979 and 1980 in response to the Carter administration's assault on Christian radio stations and private schools. Carter's IRS announced to anybody who started a Christian school in the last 20 years: "We'll presume your school is a segregated academy, so we attack and take your status away from you." And then they started leaning on Christian radio stations for not giving equal time -- to whom, the devil? That's when the Southern Baptists got political and got organized. The reason the Christian right got organized was in self-defense against a series of [government] assaults.

I've been in the room when Republican leaders turn to a Ralph Reed and say "What do you want?" "We want tuition tax credits, we want per-child tax credits, we don't want the government to take our money and make fun of our religion with the National Endowment for the Arts funding Piss Christ." This fits very comfortably in the "Leave Us Alone" coalition.

Insight: How did your life change when all of a sudden in 1994 Republicans swept both houses of Congress and you went from being an outside agitator to a close friend of the speaker of the House, the third most powerful man in the federal government?

GN: It was less of a transition than I expected. I flew down to Atlanta to spend election night with Speaker Gingrich and his campaign in 1994 because I believed we were going to take the House and the Senate, and we had decided sometime earlier that summer that it was doable and going to happen. So I can remember hearing on TV that the establishment announced that Republicans will take the House and Senate and not being particularly surprised.... That night, Gingrich passed out ice-cream bars and champagne to 20 or 30 of us sitting there. Then he said, "Okay, that's done. Now, back to work." The next morning I was on a plane back [to Washington] for the Wednesday "Leave Us Alone" meeting organized toward what do we do now.

The difference, I suppose, is that now the establishment press has been somewhat more open to our viewpoints, whereas before these people didn't know and didn't care -- although that's not completely true. There are still reporters who have never phoned the taxpayers' movement and asked what we thought about anything.

Insight: Any other significant changes for you or for ATR after Republicans came into power?

GN: We have focused a lot more at the state level as a result. When Republicans said, "We're going to come in and disperse power to the states," they actually meant it. So we've focused a great deal on building state taxpayer groups in all 50 states and networks similar to the Wednesday "Leave Us Alone" coalition, only meeting in states. Now, on almost everything we do, there's a two-track process, there's federal legislation and there's state legislation

Insight: What do you look for in an issue to go after or to recommend to the Republican Party to pursue?

GN: Does it unite the "Leave Us Alone" coalition, unite the center-right? Does it make everybody happy, or are they at least indifferent? There are some issues that different groups don't care about, but they should be either for it or indifferent.

Does it divide the left? School choice reaches right into the heart of the Democratic coalition and takes people out of it. It divides the left because the teachers' unions are on one side and all the parents of poor children are on the other and it makes Bill Clinton choose between poor parents and teachers' unions. Paycheck protection [requiring unions to seek workers' permission before funding political activities], sets up union bosses vs. workers. Seventy-five percent of union members are for paycheck protection, but union bosses are against it. So you look for an issue that unites your side, keeps the center right "Leave Us Alone" coalition together, and divides the other side and allows you to reach in to the Democratic coalition and take their hearts out.

A third rule of thumb: Is it important enough that when you win it, you have something? Is it worth the candle? I think ultimately our goal as a center-right coalition should be to reduce the total cost of government in the next 25 years by half, using four measures of the size of government: federal, state and local spending as a percentage of GNP [gross national product]; the regulatory burden as a percentage of GNP; the total employment of people by the government; and assets controlled by the state, generally pension money and land.

Insight: And you think you can cut all this in half in 25 years?

GN: That's one generation. In half is radical, but 25 years makes it reasonable, because you can phase in Social Security as a fully funded system in 25 years. You could see education becoming more effective and more efficient over a 25 year period. One generation includes losing presidential elections, having setbacks, having recessions. I could draw you a picture of how we could do it in six years if I wanted to presume everything worked perfectly. But it doesn't work that way.

Insight: You seem to be more optimistic than other conservatives about the future of the movement. Why is that?

GN: I'm optimistic, I think" because I spend an awful lot of time et the movement level on a lot of different issues. If I worked only one issue, such as right to work -- and we haven't passed right to work since the eighties -- I could get frustrated. But since we work on, both at the federal and the state level, so many different issues, we revel in the successes. If you just look at school choice in Washington, we lost. But we passed it in Minnesota and Arizona, and we're close in Pennsylvania So I see successes at the state level and small successes at the federal level that can be replicated in other fields.

The other thing is I got out of college in 1978. There were two threats to American liberty: the Soviet Union and Washington. One of those is finished.... We now have the opportunity to turn our attention from fighting the Soviet Union and redeploying our assets to reducing the size and scope of the federal government, which is the other threat to our liberties. Frankly, Washington has done more damage than Moscow ever had a chance to -- because Moscow never got over here.