Norquist Gets Candid

By Bill Moyers, NOW with Bill Moyers. Posted November 9, 2004.

This is a transcript of an interview broadcast on PBS on Nov. 5.

Bill Moyers: The president [uses] the political muscle to back his claim to a mandate – and the enforcers to carry it out. One of them is with me now, Grover Norquist, one of the most prominent and powerful figures in the conservative movement.

From leading college Republicans – he himself has two degrees from Harvard – to running Americans for Tax Reform, which dubbed Senate minority leader Tom Daschle an "enemy of the taxpayer" and helped to defeat him, Grover Norquist is a prime mover on the right. In the words of Newt Gingrich, "the most creative and most effective conservative activist" in the country.

He's also one tough hombre. This week he told Democrats to get with the program, accept the fact that they are powerless. The Washington Post quotes him saying after the election: "Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they're fixed then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful. They don't go around peeing on the furniture and such."

Grover Norquist assures us he was speaking tongue-in-cheek, but Democrats and liberals are now accustomed to have his thumb in their eye.

Welcome back to NOW.

Grover Norquist: Delighted to be with you.

Moyers: Did you really say that?

Norquist: Yes, well, what happened is the question is what about the tension between Republicans and Democrats in Washington. And I said, "Look, back in the '60s and '70s, there was no tension between the Democrat majority and the Republican minority. Because the Republican minority was so comfortable in the minority. When we get to that point again, Washington will be sedate and quiet."

Moyers: Are you about to do to Democrats what Democrats did to Republicans in those days?

Norquist: In the sense that back then the Democrats were the majority party in the United States. And you could step up and run as a Democrat and you won. And you could walk into a room and know that a majority of the people agreed with your world view. Today, that's largely true for Republicans. And if the Republicans are competent and keep working at it, I believe that for the next generation, the Republican Party, not just in Washington but in state capitals as well, will be the dominant majority party in the United States for the next 25 years or more, just as the Democrats had been since the 1930's.

Moyers: You said not long ago the Democrats are toast.

Norquist: Yeah, over time. Well, actually, the presently structured Democratic Party: organized labor, trial lawyers, big city political machines, the dependency lobby, both wings of the dependency lobby, the guys who are locked into welfare dependency, and the guys who make $80,000 a year managing that dependency, making sure they don't get jobs and become Republicans. That group right there, the hate and envy class division Democratic Party that's toast. There will be a Democratic Party. There will be two parties. I don't know how the Democratic Party will restructure itself, but it cannot be the 1930s class division, trial lawyer, labor union boss party that it is today.

Moyers: That has been your goal. I've followed you for a long time. That has been your goal since you crawled out of the cradle. And in your wildest dreams could you have imagined getting to this point today?

Norquist: Yes, I think the collapse of the Soviet Union as quickly as it happened and as bloodlessly as it happened was a pleasant surprise. But everything else is largely on track. And Bush and the Republicans in the House and Senate and in the state legislatures have laid out a game plan to increase the number of Americans who own shares of stock.

Why is it important to reform Social Security? First of all, because if you're under 50, it's a lousy rate of return. You do much better off in the stock market or a bond or a five percent savings certificate. Social Security gives you a one percent, or young enough, a negative rate of return for your Social Security. That needs to be fixed. But politically when every American has the option of a personal savings account, I believe we're moving to a situation where instead of 60 percent of Americans owning some stock, we'll have 100 percent of Americans owning substantial amounts of stocks in 401K's, IRA's, personal savings accounts.

Moyers: Let me ... a couple of weeks ago, we had a report on single women in Nevada. And the woman I'm about to show you hadn't made up her mind whether she was going to vote for Bush or Kerry. She's an ordinary working woman with three children who lives in Nevada. And this was a bit of that report. Let me show it to you.

Norquist: Sure.

Michelle Mitchell: What don't the candidates understand about your life?

Penny Katick: How expensive everything is. Most people would think nothing of just stopping at the store on the way home and getting, you know, getting some milk and gas. For us it would be a gallon of milk and a gallon of gas is almost a hour's wages. And so when your son guzzles a gallon of milk and you think "No, that's supposed to last us for the rest of the week." Little things like that, but they don't realize how hard it is every day.

Bill Moyers is the host of the weekly public affairs series NOW with Bill Moyers, which airs Friday nights on PBS.

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