Sometimes they send the wrong people off for treatment. I do wonder about Grover Norquist in about the same way I wonder about Glenn Beck. That said, and if we're talking about treatment here, I think treatment probably would be wasted on either of those men. Let's save our mental health dollars for Congressional Republicans who a) signed Norquist's totally weird pledge, and b) are as cowed by Norquist as they likely would be by their dominatrix.
If the pledge had been about never accepting campaign funds in return for future favors, well hurrah. But it's not. It's a poisonous political confection left over from the Reagan years. It's all powdered sugar and no nutritional value. To sign it is idiotic enough in a democratic republic -- "I will never do the negotiating expected of me in our system and that you hired me for as your representative, no matter what!" That this idiocy reaches into to the 2011 America at a time when intelligently applied revenues would save the economic futures of so many Americans, Republicans are sucking their thumbs and saying tremulously, "I don't dare!" even though most of them are 40 and older.
Of seven Republican refusniks in the Senate, one senator stands out. She is not a sucker.
Maine Sen. Susan Collins is one of the seven Senate Republicans who have not signed Norquist's tax pledge. She says she doesn't sign pledges.
"I pledge allegiance to the flag and to the Constitution, and that's it," she says.
She says her vote to end the ethanol subsidy could be the start of a trend.
"There may be other loopholes in the tax laws or incentives that are no longer needed or too expensive, simply not affordable, that we should ... take a look at," she says. ...NPR
Best we can do so far, I guess, is play the loopholes game, hoping Norquist shuts up. According to the NPR report, John Cornyn is also willing.
The Republicans who have pulled their thumbs out of their mouths, though, are still biting their fingernails.
