Pavlovian Republicanism

Conservative interest group Americans for Taxpayer Reform, headed by Grover Norquist, has come out "strongly opposed" to the bill currently under consideration to claw back 90 percent of bonuses paid to people making more than $250,000 at firms receiving more than $5 billion in government bailout money. Says ATR, that bill amounts to a "tax increase."

Now, American for Taxpayer Reform asks politicians to sign an "anti-tax pledge" promising to oppose all tax increases. Sucks to be him, though: quite a few of those pledgees have been making populist noises about voting "yea" on that bill.

What to do? Well, Norquist argues to ABC (via voicemail), that the pledgees must support offsetting tax cuts.

If your goal is to recoup the resources that you've given people that you hadn't thought would be spent this way, you can make it not a tax increase simply by having an offsetting tax cut on honest taxpayers. Or you could do the same thing by cutting the amount of money that you were going to give AIG in the next tranche that they'll demand, so you can have the withdrawal of the resources done in less spending.

Republicanism, in nutshell: Cut taxes, have some babies, save marriage from Teh Gay... oh, and 9/11.

(If Norquist wanted to say something "not stoopid," he might have simply noted that the proposed legislation amounts to a bill of attainder.)