Norquist: Republicans (Like Reagan) Who Vote For Tax Increases Are ‘Rat Heads In A Coke Bottle’

-
aldron on Mar 24, 2012 at 10:56 am
HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania — Republican lawmakers who vote for tax increases are “rat heads in a Coke bottle,” anti-tax activist Grover Norquist said during a speech Friday at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, a conservative gathering where he was a featured speaker.
Last week, Norquist called Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval a “rat” for supporting tax increases. This week, Norquist expanded the attack, saying that the same way Coca-Cola would lose customers if a rat head was found in a Coke bottle, Republicans voting for tax increases “damage the brand.” Instead, Norquist said, the GOP needs conservatives like former President Ronald Reagan who oppose taxes at all costs:
NORQUIST: Don’t raise taxes. Tax reform? Sure. Reduce rates, broaden the base, like Reagan did. … No net tax increases! [...]
Republican elected officials who vote for tax increases are rat heads in a Coke bottle.
Watch it:


By invoking Reagan to make his case, however, Norquist is again ignoring Reagan’s legacy. Reagan was a serial revenue raiser, hiking taxes a total of 11 times and in seven of his eight years in office. His 1982 tax increase was the largest peacetime increase in American history, and contrary to Norquist’s anti-tax beliefs, was immediately followed by “exceptionally strong” economic and job growth.
Norquist, of course, is well aware of Reagan’s tax raising legacy, he just chooses to ignore it. In a recent appearance on The Daily Show, Norquist laughably refused to criticize Reagan, saying he didn’t hold the tax increases against the conservative hero because “he hadn’t signed the pledge.”

Tags:


By clicking and submitting a comment I acknowledge the ThinkProgress Privacy Policy and agree to the ThinkProgress Terms of Use. I understand that my comments are also being governed by Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policies as applicable, which can be found here.


Norquist: Republicans (Like Reagan) Who Vote For Tax Increases Are ‘Rat Heads In A Coke Bottle’

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Money & Company

-
Image
Stock markets around the world are tumbling on fears that the global economy is falling precipitously and that U.S. and European lawmakers are unable to stop the bleeding. The market is at risk of the biggest weekly drop since the depths of the global financial crisis in 2008. As of 10:40 a.m. PST, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 425.22 points, or 3.8%, to 10,699.62. That followed a 2.5% drop on Wednesday. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index is off 39.09 points, or 3.4%, to 1,127.67. The U.S. declines followed sharp drops overnight in European and Asian markets, most of which fell about 5%. The worldwide sell-off followed the Federal Reserve's announcement Wednesday that it is rejiggering its holdings of Treasury bonds in its latest bid to spur the economy by lowering interest rates on everything from home mortgages to car loans. Many analysts doubt the Fed action will have any measurable effect, and investors were spooked by the Fed's bluntly worded a...
Read more

Florida GOP Takes Voter Suppression to a Brazen New Extreme | Ari Berman | Politics News | Rolling Stone

-
Image
Imagine this: a Republican governor in a crucial battleground state instructs his secretary of state to purge the voting rolls of hundreds of thousands of allegedly ineligible voters. The move disenfranchises thousands of legally registered voters, who happen to be overwhelmingly black and Hispanic Democrats. The number of voters prevented from casting a ballot exceeds the margin of victory in the razor-thin election, which ends up determining the next President of the United States. If this scenario sounds familiar, that’s because it happened in Florida in 2000. And twelve years later, just months before another presidential election, history is repeating itself. Back in 2000, 12,000 eligible voters – a number twenty-two times larger than George W. Bush’s 537 vote triumph over Al Gore – were wrongly identified as convicted felons and purged from the voting rolls in Florida, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. African Americans, who favored Gore over Bush by...
Read more

Latino Growth Not Fully Felt at Voting Booth - NYTimes.com

-
Image
DENVER — The nation’s rapidly growing Latino population is one of the most powerful forces working in President Obama ’s favor in many of the states that will determine his contest with Mitt Romney . But Latinos are not registering or voting in numbers that fully reflect their potential strength, leaving Hispanic leaders frustrated and Democrats worried as they increase efforts to rally Latino support. Multimedia Voter Voices: Hector Galindo Morales Voter Voices: Hector Galindo Morales Close Video See More Videos » Graphic The Hispanic Electorate The Election 2012 App A one-stop destination for the latest political news — from The Times and other top sources. Plus opinion, polls, campaign data and video. Download for iPhone Download for Android Samantha Sais for The New York Times Barbara Gudenkauf of Nogales, Ariz., said many of her fellow Latinos felt that “their issues aren’t being addressed.” Interviews with Latino voters across the country s...
Read more