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On this Sunday's Meet the Press, Grover Norquist repeated his claim that the so-called "tea party" is going to come back stronger than ever now that President Obama has been re-elected: Grover Norquist's Fascinating Theory:

Grover Norquist, despite what some might construe as recent evidence to the contrary, is nothing if not bullish on the future of his brand of radical anti-tax ideology:

“We are about to have a Tea Party second wave that will dwarf the first wave and that is because while ‘spend too much’ brought the Tea Party into existence, we’re about to walk into ‘spend too much, regulate too much, and tax too much,’ all together. It’s going to be a perfect storm of annoying government behavior, which is devastating to the economy, and I think the small business community which is particularly hit by Obama’s tax increases are going to lead the fight bigger, stronger, tougher than the last Tea Party.”

Yes! And then this will happen.

Look out everybody! Grover's coming with another army of angry seniors playing dress-up again! Be afraid... be very afraid! Who needs Fox when we've got Meet the Press, with two CNBC hacks, an anti-tax zealot lobbyist, and a moderator who parrots Republican talking points at every opportunity, balanced out by one Democrat.

And as a reminder, there is no "tea party." It's an AstroTurf rebranding effort designed to try to get the Bush-stink off of the word Republican.

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After discussing the Democrats' plan to finally free Republicans from their pledge to anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist and the possibility that they might take America off of the fiscal cliff in the beginning of the year for that to finally happen, Stephen Colbert found himself still haunted by "the Norquist."

In order to "appease him," Colbert ended up having to sacrifice a human baby to Grover, who he assured us all would be just fine once this was all over.

All of which was almost as frightening as the fact that this man has the actual stranglehold he does over our members of Congress these days.

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Looks like someone knocked themselves out of the running as a vice presidential candidate after daring to challenge King Grover this week: Norquist: Jeb Bush Insulted Mitt Romney By Abandoning Anti-Tax Pledge:

Grover Norquist lashed out at former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) on Friday, the latest Republican to buck the conservative leader’s anti-tax pledge.

During an appearance on CNN’s the Situation Room, a visibly frustrated Norquist — president of Americans for Tax Reform — said that Bush “kind of stepped in it a little bit” when he told the House Budget Committee that signing Norquist’s pledge to never raise taxes is tantamount to “outsourc[ing] your principles and convictions to people.” Norquist claimed that Bush had insulted Mitt Romney by abandoning the pledge:

NORQUIST: [Bush] went on to kind of insult Governor Romney because Governor Romney has made a written commitment to the American people said, ‘when I get to Washington I’m not going to raise taxes. The problem is too much spending and we’ll reform government and we’re not going raise taxes, so when i go and see a problem in Washington like Obama’s overspending, I’m not going to raise taxes, I’m going to reduce spending.’ And unfortunately what Jeb Bush said was that that was outsourcing his principles.

As Think Progress noted, Bush is not the only Republican to finally break with Norquist and his no tax pledge of late. Now if we could get Wolf Blitzer to challenge him on his assertions that Democrats are the ones responsible for busting the budget or that you could call anything the Republicans are trying to do "reform." They broke the bank with two unfunded wars and an unpaid for prescription drug plan and tax giveaways to the rich and now they're using the deficit as an excuse to destroy our social safety nets which they've wanted to do for decades anyway. Heaven forbid the likes of Blitzer and his ilk will ever point any of that out to him.

Bush has brushed aside any notion he was interested in a spot on the presidential ticket a while ago. If there was any doubt that he was not going to be Romney's running mate, I'd say this probably sealed it for him. God knows we can't have any Republicans failing to pay proper homage to their dear leader who came up with his tax pledge in the seventh grade.

Full transcript below the fold.

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From Tuesday night's The Daily Show, regular Samantha Bee laid waste to Americans for Tax Reform's Grover Norquist while interviewing him about his so-called "Taxpayer Protection Pledge."

NORQUIST: My team is winning and it can be taught to Harry Reid. He wanted a $2.5 trillion tax increase last year and he didn't get it.

BEE: Your team is winning? It's like you came up with this whole idea when you were twelve.

NORQUIST: It was something I came up with when I was twelve, to get a teacher to...

BEE: I'm sorry, what did you say? You came up with this idea when you were...

NORQUIST: Seventh grade.

BEE: ...in seventh grade?

BEE (off camera): Yes, the entire federal government is paralyzed because of a document, written by a twelve year old, in 1968.

Bee's solution for the Democrats... get their own "think tank" of twelve year olds.

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As a Congressional "super committee" tasked with cutting the deficit on the verge of failure, anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist insisted in a series of interviews Monday that it wasn't his fault.

Norquist told CNN's Carol Costello that Republicans were willing to "compromise" with Democrats as long as additional tax revenues were off the table.

At least 279 Republican members of the current Congress have signed Norquist's pledge to never raise taxes.

"So, you sign the pledge as a Republican member of the super committee and you're supposed to negotiate with the other side... How can you possibly effectively negotiate?" Costello asked.

"Of course, you can," Norquist declared. "Democrats want higher taxes, that's off the table and it's been off the table for a year."

"There has been a massive compromise. Republicans, as you know, passed the Paul Ryan legislation, which is a $6-trillion reduction in Obama's $10-trillion increase in the debt. ... The agreement that Reid, Pelosi and the Republicans came to in August was not the $6 trillion that Republicans wanted to save taxpayers, but only two and a half trillion."

"What if the Democrats signed a pledge never, ever to cut entitlements?" Costello pressed. "Would that be a great negotiating tool on the super committee?"

"Well, a number of them have made just that commitment to the trial lawyers, the labor unions and the big-city political machines, promising not to cut spending," Norquist replied.

Appearing on Fox News earlier in the morning, Norquist declared that Democrats wanted the "peasants to send more in so that the king can keep spending as he has become accustom."

"No Republican in Congress has voted for an income tax increase since 1990," he boasted to Fox News host Steve Doocy. "That's a long time for the Republican Party to say, 'We do many things, raising taxes is not one of them.'"

"Republicans are not going to walk into that room again, as we're seeing, and they're not going to be fooled to raise taxes in return for promises of spending restraint."

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) told CNN Monday that Democrats had offered $1.3 trillion in cuts and $1.3 trillion in new revenue over ten years and Republicans on the committee refused.

"But unfortunately, this thing about the Bush tax cuts and the pledge to Grover Norquist keeps coming up," Kerry said. "Grover Norquist has been the 13th member of this committee without being there. I can't tell you how many times we hear about 'the pledge, the pledge.'"

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I'm not any happier about this whole debt ceiling kabuki theater as anyone else is here, as our politicians are still willing to come on the air and pretend that a lot of them are crazy enough to actually risk the United States defaulting on our debt obligations. I'm also not happy that President Obama allowed doing something about the budget and trying to get some "grand bargain" out of Republicans ended up being tied to this debt ceiling debate.

I would have preferred he was going on the air day after day demanding a clean vote on raising it and explaining how dangerous defaulting on our debt is and that it's not for future obligations, but current ones that have to be paid for. I'm also not happy with him for throwing Social Security into this mix when it's not adding a penny to our debt if it was going to mean them possibly raising the age on it in the future rather than just raising the cap on that regressive tax.

That said, I was glad to see someone finally brow beat Grover Norquist for his ridiculous "starve the beast" tax pledge and the demands he's made for ages on anyone who has signed it and for his attacks on anyone that refuses to.

Matthews went after Norquist for accusing President Obama of "having a hissy fit" and chastised him for using that sort of inflammatory rhetoric and for being more concerned about Republicans sticking to their rigid ideology on tax increases than for allowing the economic consequences that would follow if they were reckless enough to allow a default. He also slammed Norquist for not even being able to meet the terms of his own balanced budget amendment with his demands.

Matthews also hit him for his views not necessarily reflecting the views of "theamericanpeople" which Republicans apparently think is a new noun that has to be injected into every other sentence ad nauseum while they pretend that polls out there saying that the majority of voters don't agree with how they're behaving or with their policies either don't exist are aren't true.

I've watched Norquist be allowed a lot of air time lately with few challenges to his talking points and at least Matthews called him out for what his priorities are. Norquist for his part seemed fairly amused by all of this. If he really thinks it would be better for us to default than to raise the debt limit with some tax increases, it makes me wonder if he's shorting the bond market like his buddy Eric Cantor.