Grover Norquist enables Islamists in the Republican party and the US government. He is a close friend of President Bush and Karl Rove, as well as one of the most prominent leaders of the modern conservative movement.
Lat week, in Hot Air, Ed Morrissey wrote a glowing post about Norquist and his work with Americans for Tax Reform. Norquist delivered a great line, “The Left is not made up of friends and allies, but of competing parasites. If we don’t let them feed on us, they will gnaw on each other.”
Unfortunately, Morrissey failed to include information about Norquist’s other activities. Robert Spencer remedied the error with a succinct comment and an article in Front Page Magazine.
A week or so ago Ed Morrissey put up a post at Hot Air lauding Grover Norquist for his work for tax reform. I added this comment:
Grover Norquist has been responsible, more than any other individual, for the infiltration of Islamic supremacists into the highest levels of the U.S. government. See here the seminal expose by Frank Gaffney of the immense damage Norquist has done.
The continuing general ignorance among conservatives of the political aspects of Islam, and of the efforts by Islamic jihadists to impose political Islam, piece by piece, over the West, can largely be attributed to the baneful influence of Norquist. He has energetically aided and abetted the branding by CAIR and others of critics of Islamic supremacism and of those who tell the truth about this Islamic political and societal agenda as “bigots” — such that frank discussion of the full nature and magnitude of this issue has been generally unwelcome even in conservative gatherings and on conservative media outlets.
David Horowitz, in an introduction to the Gaffney piece to which I linked, says: “On the basis of the evidence assembled here, it seems beyond dispute that Grover Norquist has formed alliances with prominent Islamic radicals who have ties to the Saudis and to Libya and to Palestine Islamic Jihad, and who are now under indictment by U.S. authorities. Equally troubling is that the arrests of these individuals and their exposure as agents of terrorism have not resulted in noticeable second thoughts on Grover’s part or any meaningful effort to dissociate himself from his unsavory friends.”
Norquist founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985, at the request of President Ronald Reagan, and has headed the organization ever since. Shortly after Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, Norquist began hosting a weekly get-together of conservatives in his Washington office to coordinate activities and strategy.
The “Wednesday Meeting” has become an important hub of conservative political organizing. George W. Bush’s aide attends each week and Vice President Cheney sends his own representative. So do GOP congressional leaders, right-leaning think tanks, conservative advocacy groups and some like-minded lobbyists.
According to Wikipedia, Norquist married Kuwait-born Samah Alrayyes and brushed off a question about whether he converted to Islam as “too personal.”
Related links
Tel-Chai Nation calls it a “Mussolini made trains run on time” type of post.
Daniel Pipes asked, in January 2005, “has Grover Norquist dropped the Islam portfolio?” and answers:
Should it turn out not to be true that Norquist has given up his Islamic venture – and there is reason to doubt this, given that Islamists continue to frequent his “Wednesday Meeting” and the Islamic Free Market Institute remains embedded within his own organization – I will be noting this in future updates to this weblog entry. (January 17, 2005)
