{"id":4553,"date":"2005-06-28T09:23:56","date_gmt":"2005-06-28T13:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4553.html"},"modified":"2005-06-28T09:23:56","modified_gmt":"2005-06-28T13:23:56","slug":"the-mccain-norquist-smackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-mccain-norquist-smackdown\/","title":{"rendered":"The McCain-Norquist smackdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, at least we know who started it. Uber-activist Grover Norquist, speaking to the national conference of College Republicans over the weekend, called John McCain “the nut-job from Arizona<\/a>.” Asked to elaborate, Norquist later joked that he was misquoted, and he meant to call McCain “the gun grabbing tax increaser from Arizona.”<\/p>\n

Yesterday, McCain’s office issued a response<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“There’s never been a shortage of blowhards and bores in this town. I’m sure Grover is comfortable in their crowded ranks, but that hardly merits the attention he craves. I assume he wants to provoke us, but it’s hard to work up much interest for someone who in his continued warm embrace of Jack Abramoff is doing a more than adequate job of marginalizing himself.<\/p>\n

Most Reagan revolutionaries came to Washington to do something more patriotic than rip off Indian tribes.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

First, I’d say it’s McCain 1, Norquist 0.<\/p>\n

Second, and more importantly, McCain is right on the substance here and Norquist’s well-documented ties<\/a> to Abramoff and the bilking of Indian tribes should permanently destroy Norquist’s reputation. Indeed, McCain held hearings last week that revealed, among other things, Norquist having once asked Abramoff to steer Choctaw Indian money his way to cover a “hole” in his budget.<\/p>\n

The irony, I suppose, is that Jack Abramoff was legendary for delivering favors to the right. Now, through revelations about his criminal corruption, Abramoff has become a valuable gift to the left.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, at least we know who started it. Uber-activist Grover Norquist, speaking to the national conference of College Republicans over the weekend, called John McCain “the nut-job from Arizona.” Asked to elaborate, Norquist later joked that he was misquoted, and he meant to call McCain “the gun grabbing tax increaser from Arizona.” Yesterday, McCain’s office […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}