Tuesday, July 03, 2012

Prof. Cunningham has a interesting

piece about Grover Norquist's ironclad "no taxes" pledge the one that gets foisted on almost every GOP candidate for Dog Catcher and above, all the way up to Scott Brown and Mitt Romney.
Well, of course, Romney would pledge his soul to Lucifer to win this fall, and Scott Brown likely reads very little of what is put before him for signature what with all his family commitments.
My own view is that Norquist's pledge originates in passive aggression, in that compelling the congressional wing of the GOP to eschew all tax increases is supposed to somehow shame congress into making radical budget cuts along the lines of the myth of small gummint when the deficits explode.
The problem with this scenario is, congress is a pretty shameless institution from the git-go they will tax and spend and or tax-cut and spend or do whatever the hell they want sans demure.
Far from being a means to cut spending and shrink government down, the Norquist pledge has really been a license for the GOP to "go mental".
Thus we get governance that is neither sparse nor budgets that are balanced but we do end up with a political milieu that is largely the externalization of Grover Norquist's disordered and neurotic psyche.

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