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As talk in Washington heats up over the so-called "fiscal cliff," much of the focus has begun to center on a man who will never enter into any of the actual negotiations.
Grover Norquist, the man behind the GOP's famous anti-tax pledge, is one of the most influential voices within conservative circles. The rest of America become rather obsessed with him this last week, as Republicans begin to distance themselves from the two decades-old pledge that, once signed, binds lawmakers to a promise that they will never raise taxes.
The pledge has been signed by all but 16 of the incoming Republican members of the House of Representatives — and all but 12 of Republicans currently in Congress.
The key component of Republicans' willingness to compromise in any deal, however, includes capping deductions and/or closing loopholes in the tax code — two moves that would violate Norquist's pledge. That has led many Republican heavyweights to begin wavering on the pledge.
Norquist has pushed back this week with a series of television appearances, saying that Republicans will have to answer to constituents — not him — if they break the pledge.
But how did Norquist come to hold this much power without ever taking office? Here we look at his complicated path to prominence.
Norquist's family said he has wanted to do something "meaningful."
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Warren Norquist, Grover's father and a former vice president at Polaroid, told Business Insider that when Grover was in kindergarten, he fretted about being in top of his class.
One day, Warren said he noticed his son "thinking especially hard." He asked him what he was thinking about.
"I don't think I'm in the top reading group," Warren recalls his son saying, "and I'm figuring out how to get there."
"He has always taken life very seriously," Warren said.
Warren Norquist prepared his son for a life in the public.
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Warren had an unusual method that readied his son for a life of public speaking.
Shortly after each of his four kids entered school, Warren said he would have them each pick out a topic in the encyclopedia and write a one-minute speech about it. He would make them practice it 15 times — or until they realized how much better the last time was then the first.
Then Warren moved onto other steps. He had them hold a spoon, which was a prop for a microphone. He taught them how to stand and how to make eye contact with members of the audience.
"Then they knew they could give a real good speech," he said.
He volunteered for Richard Nixon's campaign in 1968.
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When Norquist was 12 years old, he got an early start in politics by filing "Get Out The Vote" cards. Four years later, he helped staff a fundraiser for Richard Nixon in Boston.
He wrote about it in the Washington Post in 2009:
I was one of the guys who helped staff it, as a volunteer, and they said, "Oh, you're not going to be able to go because your hair's too long." I always had long hair and thought that Janis Joplin was the high point of Western civilization. I never saw any conflict in that and being for liberty. I always thought they were sort of the same thing. The [Nixon] party people backed off, but that was a brief hiccup in my participation in American politics.
Source: The Washington Post
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