Government shutdowns like this aren’t good for anyone, bub,
And it’s not likely to expand the Donald Trump Fan Club.
But Trump and Republicans seem
To be fulfilling Grover Norquists’ dream —
Make the U.S. government small enough to drown it in a bathtub.
Grover Norquist exhibits nothing if not temerity,
But his remarks on the economic recovery inspire hilarity.
In Grover’s world,
The recovery’s unfurled,
Not due to Obama’s policies, but to Republican austerity.
NORQUIST: Obama can sit there and let all the tax [cuts] lapse, and then the Republicans will have enough votes in the Senate in 2014 to impeach.
ThinkProgess suggests impeaching Pres. Obama because Congress let tax cuts expire would be tough sledding:
Norquist certainly revels in his power, but suggesting Republicans impeach the president over tax cuts is wildly outlandish. According to the Constitution, the president, vice president, or public officials can only be impeached for “treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Preserving a tax cut that gives more to the top 1 percent than the average income of the 99 percent hardly qualifies.
Washington Post, via Jonathan Chait:
[According] to [Grover] Norquist’s interpretation of the Americans for Tax Reform pledge, lawmakers have the technical leeway to bring in as much as $4 trillion in new tax revenue — the cost of extending President George W. Bush’s tax cuts for another decade — without being accused of breaking their promise. “Not continuing a tax cut is not technically a tax increase,” Mr. Norquist told us. So it doesn’t violate the pledge? “We wouldn’t hold it that way,” he said.
Chait responds: “It’s pretty strange, isn’t it? Apparently Norquist interprets his pledge in some ultra-literal way that precludes it, in the case, from fulfilling its primary purpose. On the other hand, a plan to pass a one-dollar tax hike while cutting federal spending in half would violate the pledge.”
As we all learned in kindergarten, one consistent characteristic of bullies is that they can dish it out but they can’t take it.
Case in point: Grover Norquist, the self-appointed commandant of the right-wing thought police, was outraged recently when he learned that in an upcoming book by Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter, Pres. Obama refers to members of the tea party protest mobs as “tea baggers.”
In a spleen vent to a columnist for the Washington Times, the right-wing propaganda sheet published by the Unification Church, a South Korean Christian cult, Norquist compared use of the term “tea bagger” to the epithet “nigger”:
The Trump administration rarely bothers with a strategy or plan,
Preferring to sow chaos and disruption whenever they can.
Every day they must come up with some,
New Epstein-file coverup diversion,
And that, Dear Reader, is why the United States is making war on Iran.
