In this corner…“the most pow­er­ful man in Amer­ica not sit­ting in the White House.” That’s what Lawrence O’Donnell calls him. He has a signed pledge of loy­alty from every influ­en­tial Repub­li­can politi­cian, includ­ing state gov­er­nors, Con­gress­men, pres­i­dents all the way up to (and includ­ing) George W. Bush, and every one of the currently-​​serving GOP sen­a­tors. And yet mem­bers of his own party are often crit­i­cal of, and some­times at war with him. Frank Gaffney thinks he’s a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood sleeper agent, and Tucker Carl­son, of all peo­ple, once called him a mean-​​spirited, dis­hon­est, humor­less lit­tle creep.

Who is this inter­est­ing com­bat­ant? It’s Grover Norquist, pres­i­dent of Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform, who aggres­sively lob­bies for smaller gov­ern­ment, lower tax rates, and absolutely no increases in tax­a­tion. Ever. For any rea­son at all.

Norquist grew up wealthy in Mass­a­chu­setts and attended the Lead­er­ship Insti­tute in Arling­ton, Vir­ginia, an orga­ni­za­tion that teaches con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­cans how to influ­ence pub­lic pol­icy through activism and lead­er­ship. He was deeply involved in gov­ern­ment before he turned thirty, and founded Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform in 1985 at the request of Ronald Reagan.

Grover Norquist, look­ing stern

He is a firm advo­cate of smaller gov­ern­ment, famous for his oft-​​quoted quip: “I don’t want to abol­ish gov­ern­ment. I sim­ply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bath­room and drown it in the bathtub.”

Despite being mar­ried to a Kuwaiti PR expert, and a long-​​time cham­pion of Mus­lim causes in Amer­ica, Norquist has described him­self as a “bor­ing white bread Methodist” And although con­sid­ered by many besides Lawrence O’Donnell as one of the most pow­er­ful men in the nation, Norquist is said to live a mod­est lifestyle. Accord­ing to friend and for­mer room­mate John Fund, Norquist’s devo­tion to con­ser­v­a­tive causes is “monk-​​like” and com­pa­ra­ble to the ide­o­log­i­cal fer­vency of Ralph Nader.

He is most famous for his “Tax­payer Pro­tec­tion Pledge” which he trots around to vir­tu­ally every Repub­li­can who attains any high polit­i­cal office, and invari­ably gets them to sign because not to do so in the mod­ern Repub­li­can party is at best an act of rare polit­i­cal courage, and at worst sui­ci­dal. After yield­ing and sign­ing Norquist’s pledge, politi­cians are ham­strung by what they’ve done and have no lat­i­tude to make intel­li­gent fis­cal deci­sions. This is what gives Norquist his immense power. He has these peo­ple com­mit­ted on paper to a stance that is very dif­fi­cult to wrig­gle away from, even for politi­cians, who tend to be cham­pion wrig­glers. And Norquist is bru­tal about keep­ing them on the hook.

Tom Coburn, look­ing amused

But we are now wit­ness­ing a sur­pris­ing rebel­lion among the ranks of Norquist’s hap­less tax hostages. It appears he has finally tack­led the wrong politi­cian at the wrong time, and the fall­out promises to be both spec­tac­u­larly enter­tain­ing, and ter­ri­bly wor­ry­ing to con­ser­v­a­tive purists. Norquist found him­self at odds with the other war­rior in this steel cage match, Sen­a­tor Tom Coburn (R-​​OK), over the issue of reduc­ing ethanol sub­si­dies, an ini­tia­tive that Coburn has spon­sored in the Sen­ate. Norquist feels that cut­ting sub­si­dies, even to big cor­po­ra­tions, is the same thing as a tax increase. He main­tains that Coburn’s action was in vio­la­tion of the Tax­payer Pro­tec­tion Pledge, which Coburn has signed like every other GOP Senator.

Coburn called that accu­sa­tion non­sense, caus­ing gasps of shock and fear from his Repub­li­can col­leagues. Norquist, also stunned by this unheard-​​of oppo­si­tion, indulged in a lot of wordy blus­ter, angry let­ters to news­pa­pers and bom­bas­tic appear­ances on tele­vi­sion. When Coburn refused to back down even in the face of this pub­lic onslaught, Norquist actu­ally yielded a tiny bit and sug­gested per­haps the sub­si­dies could be slightly reduced if states would intro­duce off­set­ting tax cuts. But this in turn infu­ri­ated other high-​​profile Repub­li­cans, who felt such a deal would make a mock­ery of the pledge all of them have signed and then been forced to obey.

Coburn’s first effort to tackle ethanol sub­si­dies, co-​​sponsored by Dianne Fein­stein, was passed in the Sen­ate on June 16,  with 33 Repub­li­cans who have signed The Pledge band­ing together to defy Grover Norquist for the first time ever.  They used the obvi­ous fig leaf of an upcom­ing tax cut pro­posed by Jim DeMint that will off­set the reduced sub­si­dies… but every­one knows DeMint’s bill may never even come to a vote.

The steel cage match is still on, and it seems that Norquist, while not yet van­quished, has now been vis­i­bly weak­ened. It will be fas­ci­nat­ing to watch as this bat­tle con­tin­ues to unfold…and to see what impact it may have on the upcom­ing bud­get and deficit wars, in which the Repub­li­cans have flatly declared that rev­enue increases of any kind will sim­ply not be con­sid­ered in efforts to address the nation’s dire eco­nomic situation.

If the Sign­ers Of The Pledge can finally turn on Grover Norquist in defi­ance, then vir­tu­ally any­thing can happen.

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