Rat Heads in Virginia Coke Bottles
Norquist, Grover G.
Rat Heads in Virginia Coke Bottles Republican tax hikers are being neutralized by assertive GOP state parties. BY GROVER G. NORQUIST 0 N JANUARY 14 VIRGINIA DEMOCRATIC GOVERNOR MARK WARNER...
...The establishment business community raised $2.5 million to support these initiatives, which were opposed by Virginia taxpayer groups and the Virginia Club for Growth led by Peter Ferrara and newly elected Sen...
...Dole, who had smashed Bush in Iowa, lost in New Hampshire, lost his momentum, and lost the nomination...
...And fatally, the speaker allowed his appropriations committee to put the $500 million tax increase into the budget he had his legislature support...
...Not a single Republican senator or congressman has voted for a tax hike since November 1992...
...The good news for taxpayers is that Republican pro-taxers will soon expire or retire, while younger ambitious Republicans who expect to run for re-election or higher office are remaining true to principle...
...Those governors who look in the mirror and see someone who might one day run for president or vice president have opposed any and all tax hikes—Perry of Texas, Bush of Florida, Owens of Colorado, Pataki of New York, Pawlenty of Minnesota, and Romney of Massachusetts...
...In legislative elections just last fall, the now pro-tax Republican senators ran for office claiming to be outraged at the suggestion that they would raise taxes...
...Speaker Howell initially appeared to support this effort, only to undermine it sticking to his $500 million in new taxes and refusing to send that particular tax hike to the ballot...
...Voters shot the proposal down by 68-32 last September 9. A billion dollar tax hike in Oregon passed thanks to 16 Republican defectors...
...On November 5, 2002, these two measures were defeated by 55-45 percent and 62-38 percent, respectively...
...The commitment of the GOP to a strong, anti-tax brand, even if all Republican elected officials have not yet caught on, has set the stage for a coherent governing party...
...This gambit was flawed from the beginning...
...National Republicans learned this lesson: Pledge against tax hikes and win...
...This is a momentous change in the party structure in America...
...Voters, however, defeated it soundly (59-41) last February 3. In Alabama, Oregon, and Virginia, the big taxers found themselves relying on older Republicans who had come of age and learned their political principles under Nixon, not Reagan, and who didn't expect to run for office again...
...Pro-tax Virginia senators were challenged to refuse similar pay-offs...
...Under strong pressure, the pro-tax GOP senators began to retreat, reducing their tax hike from $4 billion to $2.4 billion—still more than twice the Democratic governor's opening bid...
...Senator George Allen and former Democratic governor Douglas Wilder demanded that any tax increase be put to a popular vote...
...Another lesson from Virginia is that the only defensible anti-tax position is opposition to any and all tax hikes...
...But at the state level, there is no united Republican opposition to tax hikes...
...All 12 defectors have demurred...
...Alabama party chair3 2 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2004 man Marty Connors spearheaded opposition to his own Republican governor...
...Within months of taking office, he actively had the state legislature put on the ballot a sales tax increase to pay for more roads in four northern Virginia counties and three southeastern counties, representing 47 percent of the population of Virginia...
...Robert Dole...
...Bob Riley of Alabama conspired with the state teachers union and the Business Council of Alabama to raise taxes by $1.2 billion...
...This is a problem that is solved over time...
...In the recent past political parties have become bank accounts for governors or presidents...
...As many as a dozen defectors announced on April 2 they will break with their speaker and vote with Democrats to enact a tax hike even larger than the governor's original billion dollar grab...
...Speaker Howell now urged all his Republicans to vote for a biannual budget that included a $500 million tax hike...
...Their pro-tax vote bought them a secure retirement...
...Virginia's state GOP and many county Republican committees have staked out the notax-hike position...
...The executive committee of Alabama's GOP voted 19-2 against the tax hike...
...Republican house speaker Bill Howell said in response that he would oppose any tax hikes, but state Sen...
...THE TAX FIGHT IN VIRGINIA highlights what has been happening across the country...
...Grover G. Norquist is the president of Americans for Tax Reform...
...A fellow quisling promised, "Tommy Norment means lower taxes for working families...
...In a joint appearance on March 1, Republican U.S...
...The tax hike targeted those Northern Virginia big businesses, such as Dominion Power, USAir, and Comcast, which had cheerfully endorsed the massive sales tax effort of 2002...
...These firms would now lose sales tax exemptions that traditionally protect consumers from being double taxed on purchase of a given product or service...
...And George W. Bush has pledged never to raise taxes and has proposed and passed a tax cut every year of his presidency...
...This greatly strengthens all Republican candidates...
...But even slacker GOP governors and legislators have been sent wake-up calls...
...The number of House Republicans who signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge rose from 100 to 216 and Senate signers rose from 20 to 42...
...Despite an otherwise successful administration—no scandal, managing the bloodless collapse of the Soviet Union, driving Iraq out of Kuwait—he was humiliated in November 1992...
...But now the GOP has decided that, like Coca-Cola, it has a brand to defend...
...Major consumer brand names are fiercely defended so that consumers can safely pick up a Coke or an Advil and know what they are buying...
...The first thing to notice is that tax hikes are being debated at the state level—not in Washington...
...They raise questions about the fitness of Republican candidates...
...Republican Gov...
...The Republican label increasingly means a candidate will not raise your taxes...
...Perry closed a $10 billion overspending problem and Pawlenty a $4.2 billion overspending problem by reducing spending—not papering over the problem with tax hikes...
...His own Republican caucus recognized his willingness to fold as a weakness...
...businesses do not pay taxes, consumers do, even if hidden in the price of electricity or a plane ticket...
...In Virginia, the average age of defecting Republican senators was 12 years greater than the age of those who opposed the governor's tax hike...
...The GOP effort to disassociate itself from such apostasy—Chichester's own county Republican Party has denounced him—is an effort to protect the party's brand in the eyes of political consumers, both now and in the future...
...The American Conservative Union gave Connors the Ronald Reagan Award for his leadership...
...The example set by the Republican Party victories in Alabama and Oregon, and even in the likely defeat in Virginia, has reinforced the anti-tax position...
...But now the GOP has decided that, like Coca-Cola, it has a brand to defend...
...Chichester's campaign literature said, "As your State Senator, I am 30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2004 GROVER G. NORQUIST focused on a conservative agenda to keep taxes low and hold the line on spending...
...Allegedly, this was not a compromise, but a terribly clever move...
...Slacker Republican governors without national electoral ambitions, such as Mike Leavitt of Utah and MAY 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 31 RAT HEADS IN VIRGINIA COKE BOTTLES Don Sundquist of Tennessee, have felt free to try to raise taxes...
...As soon as Speaker Howell allowed some new taxes there was no line in the sand that would hold...
...Here the debate has been firmly won by the anti-tax forces within the Republican Party...
...But a rat's head found in a Coca-Cola bottle discourages not simply the one consumer who bought the flawed bottle, but would make all consumers wary of Coca-Cola...
...Thus before the first shots were fired, the Virginia House of Delegates, which promised to stand like "Stonewall Jackson" against taxes, retreated halfway to the governor's position...
...break the pledge and lose...
...Party chairmen have been in fact appointed by politicians rather than elected by party activists, and discipline was wielded by the politicians against the party rather than the other way around...
...BY GROVER G. NORQUIST 0 N JANUARY 14 VIRGINIA DEMOCRATIC GOVERNOR MARK WARNER released a twoyear state budget calling for $1 billion in new taxes, including higher sales and income taxes...
...John Chichester led 12 renegade Republican senators to endorse a $4 billion tax hike...
...He continued to retreat toward the governor's larger tax increase...
...The Virginia Republican Party, led by state party chair Kate Griffith and state committeeman Morton Blackwell, denounced the renegade Republicans...
...At a New Hampshire debate, Dole publicly refused to take the Pledge signed by all other Republicans running for president...
...Bush signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge against tax increases and defeated Sen...
...Ken Cuccinelli...
...Thus, "Republican" state senators like John Chichester are the political equivalent of a "rat's head in a Coke bottle...
...Oregon GOP chairman Kevin Mannix publicly supported the referendum to repeal the tax-and-spending increase that had won the support of 16 Republican state legislators...
...0 NE OF THE HEALTHIEST DEVELOPMENTS in Virginia, as well as Alabama and Oregon, is that the Republican Party in each state has led the fight against tax hikes...
...His attempt to say he would oppose "broad based" tax hikes was not a distinction of interest to the media or public...
...Soon enough, the opposition to any tax increase pledged by the conservative and overwhelmingly Republican (61 R, 37 D, 2 I) House of Delegates began to unravel...
...In Oregon, at least three GOP defectors have already accepted a government job from the Democratic governor, allowing them to spike up their pension benefits...
...Bush then raised taxes in 1990 to fund the Democratic Congress's new spending spree...
...Warner had won the governorship (52-47 percent) in 2001 by promising that he would never raise taxes, and that any revenue increase would have to be put to the vote of the people...
...In 1988, George H.W...
Vol. 37 • May 2004 • No. 4
