Grover Norquist's Mission: 19th Century Conservatism

It’s Official Grover Norquist wants to take us there:

Question: You are known for saying that you want government to be “the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” Can you elaborate on this?

[Norquist]: I want to drop the government in half over the next 25 years, and then drop it in half again. The government’s about 33 percent of GDP, 33 percent of the economy. We want to take it down to 16 and a half percent, then take it down to eight percent, all of which would take us to where we were at the turn of the century.

Grover certainly realizes that the Administrative State, such as it was, during his “Golden Age” lacked the ability and capacity to regulate and administer rule sets such as Traffic Laws. Can you image that condition of our Nation’s Highways today without Laws mandating that everyone is to drive on the right side of the road?

Really, Grover I don’t think it’d be wise for the government to lack the capacity to regulate the 21^st century’s version of Traffic Laws. On matters touching Nanotechnology, Weapons’ Proliferation, Bio-ethics let's just let the lowest bidder decide matters of public safety. Who needs 21st Century Traffic Laws anyway. What could go wrong? But yet this is Norquist's Vision of liberty.

But the interview gets better. Grover connects the AIG rescue loan to medieval serfdom!

9. FM: What would have been the consequences if, say, AIG had not received any stimulus?

GGN: Well, to the extent that there were real assets there, they would be redeployed into the economy in real ways, and the people who had made those decisions would probably be out of work. But we also need to go to pro-growth policies. We should have zero capital gains tax. We should abolish the death tax. We have a corporate tax rate of 35 percent, when the average in Europe is 25 percent. We ought to at least take our corporate tax rate to 25 percent. Our personal tax rate, now at 35 percent, should go to 25 percent. Serfs in medieval Europe were taxed 20 to 25 percent. I don’t think we should be taxed higher than serfs.

And dammit, who doesn’t think medieval serfs could've used a Tax Cut Instead. And of course nevermind all the small business that relied on AIG for business insurance and to mange and pay ongoing claims. I am sure they could just be redeployed into the economy if misfortune struck.

But it still gets better yet.

10. FM: In 1915, the richest one percent of Americans possessed 18 percent of the nation’s income. It was around this time that Congress passed the 16th Amendment, which was an effort to even out the wealth disparities at the time. Today, the richest one percent of Americans take home 24 percent of the nation’s income. Do you view this wealth inequality as problematic?

GGN: No, because it’s not any of the government’s business who earns what, as long as they earn it legitimately. The problem that Robin Hood had with the Sheriff of Nottingham was the Sheriff of Nottingham used the power of taxation to steal all his money. It wasn’t that the Sheriff was rich: the Sheriff was the government and all the money he had was stolen. The government ought not to be in the business of making some people rich at the expense of others.

Come on Grover, seriously this is your answer to this softball question?

The Sheriff of Nottingham was a complete idiot. The correct answer is that if he wanted to raise more revenue and spur more growth, all he should have done was to cut marginal income tax rates. According to Supply Side Economics, he’d be swimming in Loot with all the increased tax revenue and the people would have been far happier at the same time.

Everyone knows that. That was a seriously Bush League answer, Grover. You could have done much better than that.

Poor Dumb Bastard.