Grover Norquist: Washington enemy number one

The scare talk about financial Armageddon if Republicans won’t raise taxes is “a completely invented crisis. Republicans can’t allow themselves to be TARPed again,” he warns. By this he means that the fiscal cliff is a replay of the tactic Washington and Wall Street used in late 2008 to bully Republicans into passing the $700 billion bank bailout.

“The world won’t come to an end if this isn’t resolved before January,” Mr. Norquist says. Part one of his strategy is “for House Republicans to pass a bill now to extend all the tax cuts for everyone . . . so everyone knows that their tax bill won’t be going up” in 2013.

Part two is for Republicans to demand that all negotiations with the White House take place in front of C-Span cameras. That makes sense because history proves that Republicans get snookered behind closed doors, and public negotiations allow voters to see what Democrats are really offering. He also wants any compromise to be available at least seven days before a House and Senate vote.

Mr. Norquist is unbending in his conviction that the only option for raising revenues and staying true to the pledge is through pro-growth reform. “Any deal now that closes loopholes,” he figures, “is the destruction of tax reform.” Why? Because “any dollar taken out of credits and deductions and then spent by Congress is not a dollar you can use for tax reform and cutting tax rates later.”