Despite his scandals, Norquist’s access keeps growing

March 27, 2006

I realize that Grover Norquist is a major player in DC, but this seems like the kind of thing that should be controversial but isn’t.

While President Bush hits the road to build support, his spring offensive is bringing conservative activists and businessmen into the White House for briefings.

“I’ve been in the White House more in the last two weeks than I was in the last two years,” Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform told this column. Norquist and conservative theoretician Jeffrey Bell were called into a meeting on the administration’s embattled immigration bill.

By any reasonable standard, Norquist should be radioactive. The Bush White House should claim to not even know who he is. And yet, Norquist is not only welcome in the West Wing, he’s been hanging out there quite a bit lately.

For one thing, Norquist’s record of insane rhetoric should make him persona non grata everywhere. We’re talking about a guy who believes the Estate Tax is morally equivalent to the Nazi Holocaust, calls WWII veterans “anti-American,” and believes “bipartisanship is another name for date rape.” This is the guy the White House turns to for policy briefings?

Moreover, there’s Norquist’s recent corruption scandals.

When not advising Bush, Norquist is neck-deep in several high-profile corruption scandals. This month it was revealed that a second Indian tribal chief represented by Abramoff scored a “White House lunch date and a meeting with the President” in 2001 days after the tribe paid Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform $25,000 at Abramoff’s direction. Also this month, ethics watchdog CREW asked the IRS to revoke the tax-exempt status of Norquist’s group for helping Abramoff and Ralph Reed secretly fund an anti-casino campaign.

It’s likely that the establishment simply expects Norquist to be a key White House ally, so his presence in the West Wing is considered routine. But in a sane world, Scott McClellan would be peppered with questions for the next week about why a controversial activist with corruption scandals and a history of making wildly offensive public comments is hanging out in the White House and discussing matters of national significance.

While in any other White House Norquist would be radio active for the reasons CB lists above, what truly surprises me is that in this White House he is welcomed after coming out against Bush’s circumventing of FISA. That is true testimony to Norquist’s power.

  • rege is right–I knew Norquist was up to something sneaky when he criticized the administration over FISA. Normally, the GOP establishment would have swift-boated him mercilessly for this “betrayal.”

    With this little story, it was clearly just a ploy. Norquist was just giving Bush a shot across the bow to remind the President who is master–that Bush had better treat him nicely or else he can flip on him. And Bush obviously came to heel like a beaten dog.

  • Indeed, CB- the next-day editorials should all be recalling Mr. Bush’s various ‘bi-partisan’ remarks and gestures, and show them, against this, for what they truly are: nothing more than gestures.

  • I think the Bush administration has calculated-correctly-that most people do not associate Norquist with the Abramoff scandal…yet. Thus far he has remained mostly behind the scenes, as being connected to people who were connected to Abramoff. His own personal connections to Abramoff go largely unexplored. Also, Norquist seems to have some of the personal discretion that Abramoff lacked. And I think perhaps he’s not as well-known to your average newspaper reader as he is inside the power circles in D.C. That being said, once he starts to appear regularly in stories related to Abramoff, DeLay or fundraising scandals, he’ll suddenly become persona non grata around the White House.

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