Alan Simpson v. Grover Norquist

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Alan Simpson publicly disses Grover Norquist on Andrea Mitchell's show.

Mitchell:

Do you have any impure thoughts about Grover Norquist?

Alan Simpson:

Plenty. But you know, here’s a good guy with a very bad idea and he was gathering up those signatures back in the ’80s and the early ’90s when inflation was zip, when unemployment was zip, and anybody who would sign anything before they come to Congress and hear the debate and participate in it hopefully and get in to the floor, management and the amending process and the conference committee, those people I mean why would you do that? It’s like selling your soul!

Now Grover, I said, would be irrelevant in two years, and I say that– he’s got about another year and a half to go– he will be irrelevant. This guy is a zealot. A zealot is one who, having forgotten his purpose, redoubles his efforts, and he sees the crumbling of the great house of cards.

It’s like Jarvis out in California back in the late ’70s. He’s left schools destitute, he’s left institutions destitute. You can’t come in and play this kind of a game when everything has changed in America, and this time everything has changed because it’s all coming to pass on December 31st, and Grover-babe is losing a person a day and he knows it. So what does he use to cover that? Cutesies. Little smart Alecs. I know that. I don’t know who else does that. I have done that.

He is becoming irrelevant. And you can see it in his eyes. He knows the game is up. Because good people of good faith have decided that instead of being Republicans, or Democrats, they’re Americans. And instead of being beholden to Grover Norquist and the AARP, they’re beholden to the United States of America. Those guys are going to take their lumps.

"Grover Babe"? Interesting choice of words.

Rep. Peter King went after Norquist today. I often wondered when establishment Republicans were going to get tired about being pushed around by Norquist. It looks like I now have my answer.