Grover Norquist takes on the tyranny of federal taxation

Insight on the News, Jan 26, 1998 by John Berlau

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.