How The GOP Became The Anti-Tax Party – Grover Norquist (Americans for Tax Reform)

Grover Norquist:

It is a strategic move to allow unknown people running for office for the first time to have a track record.

Eric Wilson:

I'm Eric Wilson, managing partner of Startup Caucus, the home of campaign tech Innovation on the right. Welcome to the Business of Politics Show. On this podcast, you are joining in on a conversation with entrepreneurs, operatives, and experts who make professional politics happen. Our guest today is the Grover Norquist, founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform. Since 1985, Grover and a TR have been a fixture of Republican politics shaping the party's dedication to cutting taxes. In our conversation, we discussed the origins of a TR, the keys to its long lasting success and lessons for other organizational entrepreneurs. Grover, how did the idea to start Americans for Tax Reform come about? Were there other contemporaneous organizations that served as models for you?

Grover Norquist:

Well, I ran the National Taxpayers Union. When I got out of college, I was associate director and then a few months later, executive director of the National Taxpayers Union, that would've been in 78, just got out of college just in time to meet the California Proposition 13 success and then worked in 15 states passing calls for a constitutional convention to a balanced budget amendment and to do similar spending and tax limitation measures as California enacted in June of 1978. Then I did that, went to business school and then came down to dc, worked with the Republican Party. It was in 85 when the Reagan administration wanted an outside organization that would support the enactment of tax reform. It became the Tax Reform Act of 1986, took us a year plus to pass the bill. President was kind enough to ask me to run it, knowing if my work at the National Taxpayers Union and other places.

And so I put it together. I was the founder and became president. I was executive director to start with until I decided I'm in charge. I should be president. So I made myself president instead of executive director, and we worked to get the tax reform package through. But what really mattered was towards the end, a lot of Republicans, a lot of the conservatives, worried that if you reduced marginal tax rates and broaden the base, which was the goal, which would be good for growth, that it would be easier for tax rates to increase because there were so much lower, but there wouldn't even be the protection of deductions and credits. And so I created the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, wrote it down, not on a napkin or anything, but typed it out and shared it with a number of Congressmen, Gingrich and Dick Army and other folks saying, what do you think about the wording?

I didn't get any response at all. These are from friends too. Nobody wrote, this is brilliant. This will change the world. You should write it this way. And so I went with my original draft, which basically says, no net tax increase at the national level in Washington and sent it out. A hundred Republican congressmen and 20 senators all signed a pledge saying, I'm never going to vote for a tax increase. Well, the President also signed it and endorsed the pledge, which meant that when they went into the smoke-filled room to do the last minute changes, if you're having 150,000 changes in the tax code, who knows what they all add up to unless you're careful. And they not only were very careful, it was a $60 billion tax cut, not tax increase when it came through. And so that pledge, which was used tactically for the enactment of a tax reform bill to make sure it wouldn't be a tax increase, was so successful in the 1986 election and helping candidates explain who they were.

Who am I? I'm the Republican who takes the pledge. That's the kind of guy I am. And it was so popular that the Democratic Congressional Committee sued us and said, you have broken the law because you endorsed all these candidates and 5 0 1 4, you're not allowed at the time to endorse candidates. And my lawyer, bill Barr, he argued that he didn't endorse them. A TR Americans for Tax Reform did not endorse candidates. He said this taking the pledge. And the Democrats said, well, everybody knows what the right answer is there. I really wanted to get that in writing. If everyone knows it, perhaps you could tell your candidate.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah, why haven't you signed it?

Grover Norquist:

And then I could retire and go home. Yes.

Eric Wilson:

Well, so Grover, how did you come up with the idea for a pledge that doesn't seem like an obvious tactic or strategy to me.

Grover Norquist:

I thought of the idea when I was about 13 in high school, and the teacher at public school was ranting that elections don't mean anything and nobody knows who their congressman and their state legislator is, and it's all a fraud. And I thought to myself, well, it's kind of true. I don't know the name of my state legislator, and I was fairly political and I certainly didn't know the name of the dog catcher or many of the other local offices, and how could one change that? And I thought, well, if the Republican Party had a brand that it was the party that would never raise your taxes, I thought that would get you 45% of the vote to begin with, and then you could go argue about how good looking you were and how many DUIs the other candidate had. But when I was 13, there were very few people listening to me with my candidate and ideas I might have, but that stayed with me.

I thought if one of the problems with a Republican party or a Democrat party, but the Republican Party that I was more comfortable with believed in certain things, but there was always some Republican. Bob Dole comes to mind who wasn't with all the other kids and said, I'm for tax increases. Well then how do you explain Republicans are against tax increases when Bob Dole is the leader of the Senate? So I thought, well, there's got to be a way to make this work. And then when the pledge came up, I thought, this is not simply a good tactic to pass the bill. In fact, it is a strategic move to allow unknown people running for office for the first time to have a track record. Because once the pledge was up and running and people were used to it, if somebody took the pledge, you knew they meant it.

And it became infinitely more powerful and useful as a brand for the Republicans. When Herbert Walker Bush took the pledge in the primaries, as did all the other Republicans except dol, and they defeated DOL who was running ahead, who was supposed to win in New Hampshire in 88, he lost later dol did take the pledge when he ran successfully in the primary in 96, which gives you some idea of the power of the pledge. That's not something Dole would've normally done. So Bush took the pledge, defeated Dole. Then he was 14 points behind Mike Dukakis governor of Massachusetts when he was speaking to his own convention Bush. And he gave the speech about the Democrats will come and want a tax increase. I'll say no. They'll push me. I'll say no. They'll push me again. I'll say no, and then I'll finally say, read my lips.

No new taxes. So he made it very clear he was running as the no tax increase candidate. He went from 14 points down to winning by six or eight points because he was the candidate who wouldn't raise your taxes. But then two years later, he made the mistake of listening to John Sununu and Dick Darman, two smartest men in the world who told him no one would notice if he raised taxes. And this is the guy who won the Cold War, managed the collapse of the Soviet Union, knew a lot of blood on the floor, kicked Iraq out of Kuwait without getting stuck, occupying the country for 20 years, a very successful presidency except he raised taxes and he lost After that. In 94, we had 96% of Republicans running for office, signed the pledge. We had big, huge blowups, four feet by six feet of the pledge that people would sign and give to local Republican chapters and smaller versions you could hand out in mailings to make it clear that the Republican Party and me as a candidate, I will never raise your taxes.

One of the things that you can point to in terms of the Taxpayer protection pledge changing American politics in the 62 years between 1932 FDR and 19 94, 62 years, the Republican Party won Congress, house and Senate only twice in 62 years. They had control of Congress for four years. Two under Truman, two under Eisenhower. That's a one party state because Congress runs the country. Yes, you have Republican presidents, but that just means the Democrats go, we'll wait until you leave Mr. Eisenhower and pass what we want. Oh, Richard Dixon, we'll wait until you leave and then we'll pass what we want. Even Reagan, we'll wait until you leave and pass what we want. There is no stopping the Democratic Party that controlled Congress all the way through. You could delay them. That's all the President could do. Since the pledge became signed by most Republicans and kept by Republicans in 94 on the Republicans have won Congress half the time, we went from almost never to 50%. So it made the Republican party competitive in national politics.

Eric Wilson:

Grover, the Taxpayer Protection Pledge obviously turned that around and give it credit for some of the ideological backing for the Republican Revolution in 1994. You mentioned that Newt Gingrich was involved in developing the Taxpayer Protection Pledge. So the pledge gets a lot of attention. But there's one thing that I wanted to peel back for our listeners on, which is the Wednesday meeting. It is a must attend event in Washington DC and it's been replicated in state capitals around the country and in the world. I've been to Wednesday meetings in other countries myself. And so in this remote work world, what is the benefit or the power of that in-person convening

Grover Norquist:

The Wednesday meeting? I think one of three things that I would sort of put on my tombstone, at least at present. One is the Taxpayer Protection Pledge. The other is the concept of the modern Republican Party is a Leave us alone coalition. And the Wednesday meeting is the personification of the Republican party's structure, and that is the modern Republican party. If the people were to sit around a table in the Republican party and tell you why they're there, they would focus on different issues. Second Amendment, homeschooling, religious liberty, low taxes, less regulation, run my business, property rights, but they all had the same request. Leave me alone in my most important vote moving issue. They're not asking the government to do anything to anyone else. They're not saying, please go steal money from other people and bring it to me. Please go tell other people to join my religion.

Please tell other people they must be hunters and have guns. No, no, no. Just leave me alone. That's it. And so the Senate Wright Coalition, I wrote a book entitled Leave Us Alone Coalition is a coalition of groups and people who wish to be left alone on their vote moving issue. There's some people who vote on the Second Amendment, want their gun rights left alone, who may have the oddest views on free trade, in my view. But that's not what they vote on. They vote on being left alone with the Second Amendment, the homeschooling movement. Leave my kids alone, the School Choice Movement, parental rights movement, let parents run their own, their kids' lives, leave parents alone, leave families alone. Religious liberty, people from the most important thing is practicing their faith and transmitting it to their children. They don't ask for Baptist stamps. They want to be left alone.

Don't raise my taxes, don't raise other people's taxes. Don't raise my taxes, leave my business alone. Don't regulate it or tax it out of existence. And new groups pop up all the time. 15 million Americans vape. They have stopped smoking or smoke less and vape, which is inhaling water vapor, flavored water vapor. And they want to be free to do that. They don't want to be taxed or pushed back into cigarette smoking told what they can and cannot do. So that coalition works well together because no one in the room is in conflict with anyone else on a vote moving issue. They may disagree on secondary or tertiary issues, but not on a vote moving issue. And nobody wants anything at the expense of anyone else. No one has their hands in anyone else's pocket. And the Left's Coalition is a takings coalition. Everybody there wants the government to do something for them, take money from someone else, tell 'em their swell, different things, but they want the government to proactively do things for you at the expense of other people. And those are the two coalitions in America. And they're not moving. They're pretty set in their way since Reagan came into office and created a Republican party that was small, al Libertarian in its behavior, not in its ideology, but in its behavior. We will leave you alone.

So how do you organize in a world where the parties are not just regional North South, which they were for a hundred years, but now based on principle. And so I went to many conservative meetings from when I was up in Massachusetts as a high school kid and a college student, and then down in DC and I made a list of all the things that kill meetings that make them too boring to go to or not constructive. And like the sculptor who was asked by the visitor who said, I see here in your studio this beautiful marble sculpture bust of Zeus. How did you possibly make that marble bust of Zeus? And the sculptor said, well, I took this big block of marble and I removed all the bits that didn't look like Zeus. And so I thought about all the meetings I'd been to, made a list of the things that killed them and said, my meeting will not be the following.

No one talks for more than three minutes. You can only talk about the future, not about how the world's gone to Haiti since the Reformation. Just talk about the future. You can only talk about what you are doing about the future. You're not allowed to say, I wish the President would do this. That's not a useful conversation unless the President takes orders from you. I intend to start this campaign so the president will do X. Okay, well, that's what you're doing. That's useful. That's good to know. We could help. And if you feel you have more to share, you put it in paper in writing and people who tell you, well, I don't have time to write it all down. Well, we're not going to let you practice.

Eric Wilson:

This is not your warmup.

Grover Norquist:

Yes. To explain your position. If you can't articulate it yourself, you'll find yourself repeating what you think you already not said. So is that list off the record meetings, our goal was the 60% of the people who represented and worked with the 60% of Americans that either voted for Reagan or would've if they were the right age. This is not the 50 most right-wing people in a state. It's not the a hundred most conservative extreme people in dc. It's people who run structures or belong to structures and organizations and networks and publications that speak to and represent a majority of the American people. And part of it is a certain amount of comedy. There's no swearing. There's no stupid joke telling, no arguments. We don't vote on anything. Does it have to be in

Person? Well, it obviously doesn't have to because for a year and a half during Covid, we operated online, not in person, but then after Covid ended and you were allowed to meet with people, the DC meeting is back to roughly the same size as before, but we probably have 30 or 40 people who do join by Zoom from other countries and other states. If you live in DC you're not invited to join virtually. But if you are from another state or another country, we do want, we get two presentations from overseas every week, and we get two state presentations every week. I mean, you might have more, but there's the people who do our international work and the people who do our state work are under orders, get the two most interesting state presenters, the two most interesting international presenters. If it's three, that's okay, but I don't want less than two.

I always want a well-rounded sense of what's going on. Partly because, and the reason I like the Wednesday meetings so much is whatever your project is, if you're working on one thing every day, you have the right to work committee. You have the right to life committee. You could year after year feel, you make no progress on your bill or your effort to change the Constitution amendment or something. But you recognize that all these other issues are moving forward at their own level and speed. And it gives you a very grounded 360 degree sense of what's happening, not just in Washington dc, but what's happening in federal level. The state level. We're pushing very hard to get more mayors involved in the state meetings and into the DC meeting. And then of course, you hear from overseas where we have a very strong meeting in Ukraine actually, and had before the war and still do in Chile and in Brazil and Argentina, Japan, the first one we had is now organized down to the prefecture level. So you do get a sense of how good ideas or bad ideas spread state to state, city to city, country to country, and what you can learn from it, what you can learn from other people's successes, failures, St mates.

Eric Wilson:

Grover, I want to get some lessons from you that we can share with other people that are entrepreneurs thinking about organizational entrepreneurship. So first, obviously there are very few advocacy organizations in this town that can say Ronald Reagan asked them to get started. What's been the key to your longevity at Americans for tax Reform?

Grover Norquist:

We've never asked for permission. We've always looked for something that wasn't being done and moved there. So create something that isn't there now. First of all, you're now the best at it about that for starting and then sell other people on the idea by having it work run to where there aren't the guns and set up your cannon.

Eric Wilson:

What other lessons have you learned or advice would you share with our listeners who want to pursue entrepreneurship in the context of a nonprofit rather than a commercial enterprise where they're selling ideas rather than a product?

Grover Norquist:

In the United States, because of our Federalist system, the 50 states, you can change the world from a single state. Wisconsin passed dramatic reform of labor law, which moved to Iowa and other states. California put in a two thirds requirement to raise taxes with Proposition 13, which now Arizona has, and Nevada has, and Iowa is about to put in. So you may think, oh my goodness, people in Washington get to do everything. No, they don't. People in Washington are largely derivative of things that have succeeded at the state level and move from one state to another. And then somebody in Washington says, you know what? This is a big deal. It's moving state to state. Term limits went from state to state, and then the Republicans passed term limits on their committee chairs, which is why the Republican Committee chairs are younger than Democratic committee chairs and why they're more active and they do more stuff while they're there because they're going to be there for six years and be gone. And the Democrats figure they got 30 years, and that came from successes at the state level.

Eric Wilson:

And so let's say you were starting over today. What's that most pressing issue facing our country that calls for its own version of a TR or the Taxpayer Protection Pledge?

Grover Norquist:

I would suggest reforming the state pensions because the way they do now where you'd have defined benefits, you promised them here half your salary after you retire to go instead to a 401k or IRA. That eliminates all unfunded liabilities and it turns all government workers into shareholders, which makes you more Republican.

Eric Wilson:

Alright, my last question here, Grover, if you weren't Grover Norquist, and we stop the recording right now, what's one thing you would tax?

Grover Norquist:

Well, if you mean any new tax, the answer is no. We need fewer tax.

Eric Wilson:

All right. Let's say it's pledge compliant. You do a reduction somewhere else.

Grover Norquist:

Oh, that's an interesting idea. I don't,

Eric Wilson:

Is it like people reclining in the seats of airplanes? What

Grover Norquist:

People who suggest tax increases should probably be taxed?

Eric Wilson:

Ouch. My thanks to Grover Norquist for a great conversation. You can learn more about all of his work@atr.org. If this episode made you a little bit smarter or gave you something to think about, all we ask is that you share it with a friend or colleague. You look smarter in the process, more people learn about the show. It's a win-win all around. Remember to subscribe to The Business of Politics Show wherever you listen to podcasts, so you never miss an episode. You can also sign up for updates at our website, business of politics podcast.com. With that, I'll say thanks for listening. See you next time. The Business of Politics Show is produced by Advocacy Content Kitchen, a media production studio.

‍