The Tax Cut Santa

Bruce Bartlett gives a history of the idea of the Republican party as the tax cut party, and discusses the man who came up with the idea of the party as the Tax Cut Santa:

I worked for Mr. Wanniski in the mid-1980s and know that he wasn’t obsessive about never raising taxes. He wanted economic growth and thought tax-rate reductions were the best way to achieve it, at least in the 1970s. But if higher taxes would raise growth, then he would support them. As he explained in an e-mail to Ben Bernanke, at the time the chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, on Aug. 11, 2005 (on which I was copied):

I for one am always ready to listen to arguments for higher taxes, more regulation and restraints on free markets, as I might be persuaded that under certain circumstances they would “invite,” not “stimulate” (a Keynesian idea), long-term growth. I’m not “anti-government,” in other words. (The Grover Norquist idea of opposing all tax increases is dumb, and Grover knows I believe that.)

Unfortunately, Mr. Wanniski opened Pandora’s box when he let loose the two-Santa theory. Republicans are now bound to it, whether they know it or not. As Keynes once put it, “Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”

It doesn't take a genius to realize the Grover Norquist idea of opposing all tax increases is dumb.  At least some people realize what problems we face.