‘Tis the season: Grover Norquist names his naughty, nice list

In recent months, as the deficit-reducing supercommittee lurched toward failure, Reid and other Democrats tried to cast Republicans as too beholden to Norquist and ATR, which oversees a famous no-tax pledge signed by the vast majority of congressional Republicans.

{mosads}In its year-end list, ATR added Reid to its “nice” list for the majority leader’s suggestion that Norquist could be impeached. For his part, Simpson, a co-chairman of President Obama’s fiscal commission who has said the ATR tax pledge constrains lawmakers, made that same list for comparing Norquist to the escape artist Harry Houdini.

As for the naughty list, Coburn made the cut following his back-and-forth with Norquist over ethanol subsidies. ATR said Coburn specifically received the award for saying, during that scrum, that he supported ethanol and federal support for renewable fuels.

In the other chamber, LaTourette said recently that he no longer felt bound by the anti-tax pledge he signed more than 15 years ago. For that, ATR labeled LaTourette “French for ‘union shill’ ” in its year-end list.

Wolf, like Simpson, has said the ATR pledge limits policymakers’ options, and also questioned some of Norquist’s professional relationships. Norquist has said that Wolf — one of the handful of House Republicans who has not signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge — was one of the few GOP lawmakers willing to consider a tax increase.

The ATR list also called out Herman Cain, the former GOP presidential candidate, for proposing a national sales tax, and well-known Democrats like Obama.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the House GOP budget guru, made the “nice” list. So, for that matter, did former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), for his role in giving the GOP another seat in the House. Weiner resigned after it was discovered he had posted sexually explicit photos to social media websites.