Man Bites Dog: Republican Cares More About the Country Than Grover Norquist?

     I admit a certain amount of caution is warranted here. Talk is cheap after all. I'm still waiting to see action to back up this talk. However we are hearing some new things since the GOP's election meltdown on November 6.

     Norquist may say this is "not his first rodeo" but the bull does seems a lot more rambunctious than in the past. You have more GOPers going out on a limb and refusing to sign the pledge. You have more speaking out against such doctrinaire rigidity. While Norquist claims to still have 219 GOPers who have signed the pledge that is less is noticeably less than in the last and hardly a comfortable majority-that leaves 216 who even as conceded by Norquist have not signed on.

     Now we have Saxby Chambliss actually saying that he cares more about his country than Grover Norquist? I mean this just isn't done. For years we've seen a party that seems willing to sacrifice the country in any way necessary for partisan gain. They had gleefully sabotaged anything that the government could do to help the economy figuring wrongly as it turned out that the President would get all the blame.

     "I care too much about my country -- I care a lot more about it than I do about Grover Norquist," Chambliss told Georgia's WMAZ in acknowledging that he could face repercussions from Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform. "Norquist has no plan to pay this debt down. His plan says you continue to add to the debt, and I just have a fundamental disagreement about that and I'm willing to do the right thing and let the political consequences take care of themselves."

     http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/23/saxby-chambliss-grover-norquist_n_2177333.html

     Implicit in this is the admission that tax cuts don't pay for themselves. To be sure it doesn't mean we're totally out of the woods. However, it does seem to point to the fact that regardless of how much Norquist tries to put a positive spin-he's argued that the GOP only losing 8 House seats shows American support for his tax pledge; certainly how Republicans define mandate today is very scaled down-but clearly he's emerged as another big loser from November 6.

     It's not just about Norquist we'll see if the GOP accepts that top rates have to go up-closing loopholes is not enough and if it were then Mitt Romney should have been elected President. At least this is another step in the right direction.