Grover Norquist, Turncoats & the Embrace of Movement Politics

This past week, I made the case for why progressives need to spend at least some of our time pressuring Democrats to stand up for America's middle class. Doing this is critical to waging an ultimately more effective fight against our opponents on the right. Beltway Democrats, of course, aren't used to this - they are for the big tent, even if the tent has no boundaries whatsoever (see all the Democrats who have been selling out their party on core economic issues, yet who never face any consequences). But if you look at the most powerful conservative activist of our time, you will see that my case is well-supported by history.

The New Yorker has a new piece on conservative activist Grover Norquist, and how he realized the one of the keys to helping Republicans effectively fight Democrats was to pressure GOP moderates and thus unify the right. As New Yorker reporter John Cassidy notes, today Norquist "criticize[s] moderate Republicans, such as John McCain and Lindsay Graham, because they think the moderates are holding back the conservative agenda." In the states, Norquist is "attacking Republican governors and legislators who raise taxes. In the past few years, a lot of states and cities have been facing budget deficits, which they are legally obliged to close. You might think this justifies higher taxes, but Norquist doesn't. He's just brutal to Republican tax raisers."

I am in no way venerating Norquist's ideology, nor his penchant for going way to far in terms of sidling up to some very shady characters. But tactically, he is clearly onto something. He fundamentally understands that division makes not an effective fighting formula. And he understands that the movement politics that comes from pressuring turncoats is far more powerful than partisan politics. Create an movement based on principles and ideology, and you have created something much sturdier than loyalty to a party label - and besides, a real movement will benefit the party anyway.

GOP leaders inherently understand this. Unlike many "big tent" Democrats, they value Norquist's work in pressuring the capitulators within their ranks. They understand that Norquist's pressure on their turncoats helps the GOP keep their turncoats in line.

Instead of whining and crying with cries of "let's just all get along" for "get along's" sake, Democrats should take some tactical lessons from their enemies who have so thoroughly drubbed them and place some value in a progressive infrastructure that demands accountability within the Democratic Party. Norquist proves that such an infrastructure - not permissive capitulation as the Democratic Party allows now - is integral to helping parties achieve majority status.